you should aplha me too quickly he might
walk a little rapidly at first but if
you see it you know a couple days ago by
the cats are really unique because
they’re the only pets we have that we
just give free license to roam wherever
they want if we let them outside people
have said that they want to track their
cats think they know generally where
their cats go and it seems that most the
time they are not they’re not right
about where their cat goes cat tracker
is a project we started because we
wanted to know where these cats went
cats are known globally as a big threat
to conservation because they kill so
many animals but in the United States
there are a lot of predators running
around so we wanted to know how far are
these cats going into the natural areas
and are they actually a threat to our
native wildlife that lives there we’re
working initially in the North Carolina
area where we have tracker units and
we’re loading them out to people to put
on their cats for a week or two at a
time
so far most the animals are staying
pretty close to home but certainly they
are making some side trips they’re
visiting other houses which is pretty
interesting so we’re starting to wonder
you know what’s luring them and some of
them are starting to go into some of the
natural areas around their houses as
well it’s important to know is it is it
10% of the cats that move a long way or
is it one percent or is the point one
percent because we start dealing with
the billions and billions of cats that
are out there if it’s 1% that could
still be a lot that are hunting when
people find out where their cats have
gone they generally react with a lot of
shock to see where fluffy pants went and
they almost feel betrayed or shocked
their responses are I was like oh my
goodness I am going to have to talk to
that cat we’re also starting to find
some interesting details in the story of
these cats
we had one cat where stayed home all the
time
then all of a sudden it went to a house
and then came back and we thought well
what is this is it GPS error or
something like that
my body’s betraying me turns out they
were out of town that weekend and the
house that I went to is where they used
to live it’s somehow remembered where it
used to live knew how to get there even
though we’ve had to cross a busy street
it’s kind of kind of risky actually well
so this one example tells us that cats
have long term spatial memory and that
they can navigate around in this area
even if 99% of the time they’re only in
their backyards what we want to do is
really crowdsource this take this into
the world of citizen science so it’s not
just a few scientists tracking a handful
of animals but hundreds of volunteers
tracking hopefully thousands of cats and
we generally advocate that people keep
their cats indoors but if you do let
your cat out we just want to know where
are they going and try to understand
some of the biological phenomenon so
that we can help in the future minimize
the impact of cats on wildlife
walk a little rapidly at first but if
you see it you know a couple days ago by
the cats are really unique because
they’re the only pets we have that we
just give free license to roam wherever
they want if we let them outside people
have said that they want to track their
cats think they know generally where
their cats go and it seems that most the
time they are not they’re not right
about where their cat goes cat tracker
is a project we started because we
wanted to know where these cats went
cats are known globally as a big threat
to conservation because they kill so
many animals but in the United States
there are a lot of predators running
around so we wanted to know how far are
these cats going into the natural areas
and are they actually a threat to our
native wildlife that lives there we’re
working initially in the North Carolina
area where we have tracker units and
we’re loading them out to people to put
on their cats for a week or two at a
time
so far most the animals are staying
pretty close to home but certainly they
are making some side trips they’re
visiting other houses which is pretty
interesting so we’re starting to wonder
you know what’s luring them and some of
them are starting to go into some of the
natural areas around their houses as
well it’s important to know is it is it
10% of the cats that move a long way or
is it one percent or is the point one
percent because we start dealing with
the billions and billions of cats that
are out there if it’s 1% that could
still be a lot that are hunting when
people find out where their cats have
gone they generally react with a lot of
shock to see where fluffy pants went and
they almost feel betrayed or shocked
their responses are I was like oh my
goodness I am going to have to talk to
that cat we’re also starting to find
some interesting details in the story of
these cats
we had one cat where stayed home all the
time
then all of a sudden it went to a house
and then came back and we thought well
what is this is it GPS error or
something like that
my body’s betraying me turns out they
were out of town that weekend and the
house that I went to is where they used
to live it’s somehow remembered where it
used to live knew how to get there even
though we’ve had to cross a busy street
it’s kind of kind of risky actually well
so this one example tells us that cats
have long term spatial memory and that
they can navigate around in this area
even if 99% of the time they’re only in
their backyards what we want to do is
really crowdsource this take this into
the world of citizen science so it’s not
just a few scientists tracking a handful
of animals but hundreds of volunteers
tracking hopefully thousands of cats and
we generally advocate that people keep
their cats indoors but if you do let
your cat out we just want to know where
are they going and try to understand
some of the biological phenomenon so
that we can help in the future minimize
the impact of cats on wildlife
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