Researchers really want you to keep your cats indoors.
study published in the peer-reviewed journal Animal ConservationResearchers and citizen scientists tracked the movements and behavior of 925 outdoor cats for a week in six countries by fitting them with GPS devices and found that while they don't venture far, the cats can do a lot of ecological damage.
"There was a big knowledge gap about knowing where cats go. We have a pretty good idea about how many animals they kill," Roland Kays, lead study author and zoologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, told USA TODAY."But we didn’t know where they did that killing." No matter where they lived, most the cats had remarkably small home ranges, with only three cats venturing farther than 1 square kilometer, or less than half a square mile, the study found. Of the three, two cats were in New Zealand, where cats have no natural predators, and one was in England, and it traveled back and forth between two villages.The cats roamed mostly in habitats disturbed by humans, such as housing developments.
Owners reported their pets killed an average of 3.5 prey a day. Accounting for the prey that cats don't bring home, that adds up to an average of 14.2 to 38.9 prey per 100 acres per year. Kays said the ecological impact was amplified because of the high density of cats in neighborhoods and because their impact is concentrated within about 110 yards of their homes.
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