Author: Susan Milius / Source: Science News
People often assume cats enthusiastically kill city rats, but that may be just an urban legend.
Feral cats caught on video were keen to watch rats lurking around a trash collection center in Brooklyn, says behavioral ecologist Michael Parsons.
But cats rarely killed, or even chased, the rats. Cats aren’t a good choice for rat-population control, Parsons, a visiting researcher at Fordham University in New York City, and colleagues suggest September 27 in Frontiers in Environment and Ecology.Cats typically prefer smaller prey, he says. A 20-gram bird or a 30-gram mouse can’t defend itself with the sharp-toothed ferocity and heft of a Norway rat. Adult rats at the Brooklyn waste center are more than 10 times that weight, at an average of about 337 grams. For 79 days, cameras set up at the center showed cats killing or nearly killing only three rats. That lackluster performance wouldn’t do much to dent a rat population.
Parsons and his colleagues had been setting up a different rat study when they noticed five feral cats creeping around the rats that researchers had microchipped at the waste center. Researchers at first bristled at the intrusion, then realized it was a great opportunity to study feral animals in real-life situations, Parsons says. Trying to use lab rats to understand free-ranging rodents’ lives is like extrapolating “knowledge of the wolf from, say, a Chihuahua.”
The cats at the…
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