NC State researchers have partnered with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences to conduct a new study that seeks to explore the environmental impacts of letting domesticated cats roam around outdoors has on native wildlife.
Troi Perkins, a senior in zoology and the head project leader of the research, said the main goal of conducting this research is to let the public know the importance of keeping cats indoors.
“We want people to know that cats are better off inside because it’s safer for the cat and our native wildlife,” Perkins said.
The project is looking to get a total of 1,000 different cats tracked in order to accurately describe the behaviors of the average cat to determine the large-scale environmental effects of sending house cats outdoors.
“We want to be able to say, ‘This is an average cat range and this is the wildlife area they could be affecting’ so that we can help to prevent wildlife depredation from our own pet cats,” Perkins said.
Researchers are particularly concerned with learning more about the amount of birds killed and eaten by cats roaming in certain wildlife areas.
“A recent study had suggested cats were responsible for the deaths of 1–4 billion birds and 6–22 billion mammals each year,” Perkins said.
In addition to Perkins, this project is also being worked on by researchers from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and some students and professors from NC State.
“This project started more out of curiosity than formal research,” Perkins said. “We were looking over camera trap data in various state parks and noticed an absence of domestic cats.”
By using GPS technology, researchers were able to measure the roaming patterns of outdoor cats to get more information about the impact cats have on wildlife.
By using GPS harnesses, the team was able to start tracking cats and where they go. A cat named Chicha, who belongs to Rob Dunn, an associate professor in biological sciences at NC State who is also working on the project, was the first cat used in the project.
“The results we got back were unexpected,” Perkins said. “She stayed mostly close to home but then there was one track that was almost a mile away over busy streets.”
It was thought to have been a problem with the GPS, but surprisingly turned out to be something much different.
“We thought it might just be a GPS error, but it turns out she had actually gone back to her owner’s old house!” Perkins said. “From there we knew cats had a lot to tell about what they are up to and where they go when owners let them outside.”
Perkins said finding a way to protect the GPS unit from falling off or being damaged turned out to be one of the obstacles she encountered throughout the cat-tracking trials.
Perkins came up with a solution to this problem by deciding to make a 3D hard-shell case for the unit.
“I created my first prototype GPS case using a 3D printer in the Museum of Natural Science,” Perkins said.
Research is still being conducted on the impact of outdoor cats and the protection of certain wildlife areas. Perkins and the rest of the researchers both at NC State and the Museum of Natural Sciences continue to reach out to the public in efforts to get a better understanding of the secret lives of outdoor cats.
