Volunteers with cats needed for study

Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Dr Phil Baker and colleagues from the School of Biological Sciences are looking for cat owners to help them with an ongoing cat predation study.

The domestic cat is known to be the most abundant predator in urban areas, and there has been recent discussion about the possible impact that cats may be having on populations of wild birds in towns and cities. Consequently, Dr Baker and the team are looking at predatory behaviour of cats in Reading to determine whether or not they are potentially having an impact.

Dr Baker explains: "One of the major problems with studying urban cats is working out how many birds and mice they catch and kill; as most of the land they cover is private gardens, hunting cats cannot be observed. Therefore, so far, we have had to rely on extrapolations made from prey returned home. But one major limitation of this approach is that, although we know not all prey killed are returned, we do not know what proportion is taken home.

"Consequently, we are looking for owners who would allow us to fit collar-mounted video cameras to their pets to record their hunting behaviour. Ideally, we would like cats that are known to kill prey regularly and which are already used to wearing a collar."

If you would like to volunteer, please get in touch with Dr Baker at p.j.baker@reading.ac.uk.