House Cats Avoid Coyote Haunts: Snap Trap Series

[Cara J]

There’s a trick to conserving nine lives, and a new camera trap study shows that it may involve domestic felines having prudence when it comes to keeping out of coyote habitat. “The pattern was relatively straightforward and obvious,” said Roland Kays, a professor at North Carolina State University and the lead author of a study in the Journal of Mammalogy that shows domestic cats (Felis catus) tend to steer clear of areas that harbor coyotes (Canis latrans). “Most of the nature preserves that we surveyed had no cats.” This newest Snap Trap photo essay of The Wildlife Society was one of the first studies of the larger eMammal Project, a citizen scientist initiative led by the Smithsonian Institute and NCSU to document animals in the east and eventually across the country. All camera trap images are courtesy of the eMammal Project. Image Credit: eMammal Project Cat owners sometimes favor their pet felines for their mousing abilities, but the animals aren’t particularly picky when it comes to small animals. Housecats are estimated to kill billions of wild birds every year in the U.S. alone as well as any number of small mammals, lizards or other animals, Kays said. The team wanted [...]

 

Read more: http://wildlife.org/house-cats-avoid-coyote-haunts-snap-trap-series/