People looking for their outdoor cats to kill local wildlife may want to heed the findings of a new study released Thursday. It suggest Giving your cat rich in meat and playing with it regularly can saturate your appetite for me.
Animal researchers in the UK enlisted the help of 355 cats from 219 households in England for their experiment; the cats were specifically selected for their habit of bringing prey home. To provide a reasonable baseline, all cats were observed in their natural environment for seven weeks before the experiment began. Over a period of five weeks, most cats then experienced different conditions that could affect their hunting outdoors (a control group was left to their own devices all the time). These conditions included various diets, toys and devices specifically marketed to keep cats away prey, such as collars with clock attached or a brightly colored collar that can be easily seen by birds.
Compared to the control group and the baseline behavior of the cats, the researchers found that several methods seemed to reduce the hunting of wild animals.
In high quality cats, protein-rich diets with lots of meat and few grains, for example, the number of animals brought home was reduced by 36%. In the playgroup – where owners played five to ten with their cats and used feather bars and mouse-sized toys minutes per day – the reduction was 25%. The brightly colored collars also specifically reduced the predation of birds by 42% but had no effect on the hunting of other small animals. Cat bells had no significant effect, and mystery leaders apparently increased the hunt for some reason.
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Although many commercial cat diets are high quality and high in protein, it is possible that some plant-based diets have certain micronutrients that cats instinctively try to supplement with hunting. IIt is not clear exactly why mystery feeders failed so much bad. It is possible, according to the authors, that the inexperience of the cats made them frustrated and hungry at the same time.
Of course the best way to stop cats from killing wildlife is to keep them indoors at all times. But some owners insist that cats need a dose of outdoor activities to stay healthy, and there can be semiwild cats what remain determined to lead a double life. So, for these situations, the researchers hope that their conclusions can help at least some owners find a comfortable remedy.
“In the management of predators by domestic cats, the behavior of owners is just as important as the behavior of cats. Therefore, management strategies must be effective and applied by the owners to kill cats,” the authors wrote in their article. published in Current Biology. “Positive interventions, aimed at benefiting cats and appealing to owners, can reduce the tendency of cats to hunt, and thus form the basis for a win-win conservation.”
The researchers plan to investigate whether cat hunting can be further reduced by behavioral tricks, such as by combining two or more methods. They also plan to study cat nutrition more closely, to see if they can identify any missing micronutrients that in less-fleshy diet.