Have you ever wanted to see what life is like for the average pet cat?
Researchers from the University of Georgia have spent a lot of time – perhaps too much time – figuring out exactly what a day in the life of a domesticated feline entails.
They strapped lightweight video cameras to 60 kittens throughout the Atlanta area and captured point-of-view video from the animals for a year, from November 2010 to October 2011.
Then they pored over the more than two thousand hours of footage to see if they could come to any sort of worthwhile conclusion.
And what ended up being the crux of the project? The rate at which housecats are allowed to go outside, hunt and kill.
Researchers concluded that cat owners should keep their pets indoors. Those that roamed outside managed to kill an average of two animals per week.
Obviously it isn’t as serious as large dogs, like pit bulls, who have a track record of causing serious injury to humans and mauling or killing other dogs.
For cats, the real target are birds, but as researchers point out, that isn’t something to be taken lightly.
In a recent USA Today report, the American Bird Conservancy said that cats are wiping out the bird population throughout the country. One in three bird species is seeing a decline in population, and it’s primarily due to cats.
