Community Corner
UGA Researchers Use 'Kitty Cam' to Study Outdoor Cats
The University of Georgia's Warnell School of Forestry followed felines' daily lives.
With the help of the National Geographic Society, a group of researchers at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources are studying the lives of outdoor, domestic cats.
The researchers, working under UGA professor Sonia Hernandez, wanted to learn how often the animals hunt and what kind of risks they take.
Ph.D. candidate Kerrie Anne Loyd and others reviewed about 2,000 hours of video from one week in the lives of 55 cats. About half of the cats engaged in hunting behavior, and about a third managed to catch something.
"Most of them left their prey," Loyd said on WLTZ TV. "They would capture it, play with it for a few minutes, then leave it close to the site of capture rather than bring it home as a gift for the owners."
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Nearly all the cats -- 85 percent -- demonstrated some kind of risky behavior, the Athens Banner-Herald reported. They crossed roads, some several times a day, and a fifth met up with other cats, some of them feral. A quarter of the cats ate stuff they shouldn't have or drank dirty water. And some visited storm drains.
You can see these daring feline adventurers for yourself at the Kitty Cam website, which features photos and videos collected in the study. Some of them are cute, while others are a little scary!
