'Cat Tracker' study reveals the secret wanderings of 900 house cats
THE GOAL OF the massive international Cat Tracker project was simple: find out where pet cats go when theyre outside. Researchers have tried to tackle this question in the past, either by following cats on foot (good luck!) or by putting radio-transmitters on collars around cats necks, but Cat Tracker was singular in its scalenearly a thousand cats across four countries wore GPS trackers for a week to shed light on how far they range and where they go.
After six years, the results are in. Published in the journal Animal Conservation, a new report the Cat Tracker team compiled data across continents to find that for most cats, theres no place like home.
I was surprised at how little these cats moved, says lead author Roland Kays of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Most of them spent all their time within 100 meters [330 feet] of their yard. While its good news that most cats arent wandering into natural areas, the study reveals that pet cats nonetheless can cause ecological mayhem and put themselves in danger. (Read more about following in the footsteps of felines here.)
Michael Cove, a cat expert at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute who studied the effects of feral and free-roaming cats on endangered small mammals in the Florida Keys, lauded the study as quite an accomplishment."
I am unaware of any studies that have examined the spatial ecology of this many individual domestic cats, or any domesticated species for that matter, he says.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/cat-tracker-shows-where-pets-go/