Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio Pay brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Boglebaum. Here, humans have tolerated the haughty demeanor
Speaker 1: of cats for at least ten thousand years, in large
Speaker 1: part because our furry feline friends are so good at
Speaker 1: keeping vermin like mice under control. But research published in
Speaker 1: the journal Frontiers and Ecology and Evolution shows that cats,
Speaker 1: while quite good at slaying small birds and mice, may
Speaker 1: have very little impact on rat populations. A team of
Speaker 1: researchers made like a modern pied piper, microchipping and monitoring
Speaker 1: about sixty rats living in a Brooklyn, New York, recycling center.
Speaker 1: The team manipulated the rat population by unleashing various rat
Speaker 1: pheromones to see how those chemicals would affect the rats behaviors.
Speaker 1: These experiments had an unintended side effect, though, as feral cats,
Speaker 1: probably attracted by the smell of potential prey, slinked into
Speaker 1: the building. At first, the researchers, apparently unfamiliar with the
Speaker 1: futility of hurting cats, tried and failed to evict the
Speaker 1: unwanted feelines. Then they decided to capitalize on this unintended
Speaker 1: invasion by including the five cats in the study to
Speaker 1: see what effect they had on the rats. With hundreds
Speaker 1: of video clips as evidence, scientists logged just twenty stocking attempts,
Speaker 1: three kill attempts, and only two successful kills by the
Speaker 1: cats during the seventy nine day experiment. Most of the
Speaker 1: time the cats ignored the rats. That kill rate is
Speaker 1: pretty low. However, the researchers did note that for every
Speaker 1: additional cat sighting, a rat was one point one nine
Speaker 1: times more likely to seek shelter. The researchers concluded that
Speaker 1: this might be the reason people have thought that cats
Speaker 1: are good at controlling a rat population. Lead researcher Michael
Speaker 1: Parsons said in a press statement, but people see you
Speaker 1: were rats and assume it's because the cats have killed them,
Speaker 1: whereas it's actually due to the rats changing their behavior.
Speaker 1: So why were the cats not more aggressive hunters? Probably
Speaker 1: because feral cats instinctively understand that one unlucky bite from
Speaker 1: a hefty twelve ounce rat that's about a third of
Speaker 1: a kilo could lead to a life altering or life
Speaker 1: ending injury. Indeed, other research has shown that cats are
Speaker 1: much more likely to kill birds and small rodents like mice,
Speaker 1: which typically weigh about an ounce or thirty Grahams and
Speaker 1: won't put up as much of a fight. Paper co
Speaker 1: author Michael A. Jute said in the same press statement,
Speaker 1: we are not saying that cats will not predate city rats,
Speaker 1: only that conditions must be right for it to happen.
Speaker 1: The cat must be hungry, have no alternative, less risky
Speaker 1: food source, and usually needs the element of surprise. And
Speaker 1: to that end, researchers suggest replicating this experiment in some
Speaker 1: other place with less food of ailable than a waste
Speaker 1: management facility in New York City. Unrelated to this research,
Speaker 1: a program called Blue Collar Cats was launched in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Wherein unadoptable feral cats are released into rat
Speaker 1: infested neighborhoods upon request to help control rodent populations. Although
Speaker 1: some questioned the wisdom of doing this, the president of
Speaker 1: the Humane Resource Alliance, the group behind the program, pointed
Speaker 1: out in a Washington Post letter that the cats were
Speaker 1: quote meant to deter rodents, not solve the city's rodent problem.
Speaker 1: It seems likely that the cats are keeping the rats
Speaker 1: on the move. Today's episode was written by Nathan Chandler
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other curious topics. Visit how stuffworks dot com.
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