A couple of years back, a study suggested that our beloved house cats are really just tiny killing machines, taking out roughly 2.3 billion birds in the U.S. alone per year, which was satirized on many websites such as the Oatmeal. While feral or stray cats are responsible for the majority of those kills, your sweet little Boots or Mittens is not without blood on his or her paws, either.
In a new study hoping to find a solution to this systemic problem, Australia’s Murdoch University observed the behavior of 114 cats for two years by having their owners monitor and freeze their “kills” both with and without having their cats wear scrunchies. You know, those hideous fashion accessories of the ’80s and ’90s that American Apparel has been doing its damnedest to bring back in style? Yep, that… only on your cat.
And it worked! According to ABC Online AU, the scrunchie-wearing cats reduced the number of bird, reptile, and amphibian kills by 54 percent.
“Bright colours are very noticeable to songbirds, they should see the cats further away, allowing them to escape earlier,” [PhD student Catherine] Ms Hall said.
“Because it’s based on colour and vision, cats won’t be able to learn to make it stop working. “Unlike what people say about bells. [They say] that cats can learn to make them less effective over time.”
The study found the collar did not make a difference to the number of mice and other mammals caught as their colour vision was not as good, meaning owners could still use their cats to catch garden pests.
“For people who want their cats to catch small rodents like rats and mice but don’t want them to catch birds, this is an effective device to use,” Ms Hall said.
They say it’s just the color that alerts the birds, but let’s be real. Your cat probably feels like a bit of a sissy having to wear that thing, which also probably affects killing performance.
Via Reddit