Hunting Behaviors of Domestic Cats (Essay Sample)

Hunting Behaviors of Domestic Cats
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Hunting Behaviors of Domestic Cats
Domestic cats have devastating effects on their prey wild animals like birds, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals. Studies discovered that they prey primarily on mammals and birds, reptiles, invertebrates and amphibians. This has caused a significant decrease in the affected wildlife population and the migration of bird species since domestic cats also hunt nestlings (Cecchetti et al., 2021). This threat should be a recommendation to the wildlife conservation to find ways to pause the threat and educate the public on the same.
In this study, all participant cats wore a filming camera for a total of 7–10 days and all outdoor hunting activities were recorded for research and conclusion. This will likely bring a more satisfying outcome since all the hunting events are recorded (Bruce et al., 2019). This is different from the former method, where owners of cats were examined on the number of prey the cat brings home. This method was less effective since it under-reported captured amounts of the target as cats do not bring home all the marks; some are eaten while others are killed and left on the preying site( Escobar-Aguirre et al., 2019). Attaching video recording cameras to the cat’s neck was more sufficient since it recorded all the preying events. Also, this study was conducted for an extended period before drawing any conclusions. Also, the results were surprising because age, sex and habitat did not influence the hunting behaviours (Huck & Watson, 2019). The cats also never showed to favour a certain species during hunting; the prey they hunt depends on the game's availability.
In conclusion, this article provides a detailed analysis of the hunting behaviours of domestic cats. It also encourages cat owners to prevent further hunting of threatened wildlife species by their cats by offering solutions on how they should be controlled (Crowley et al., 2019) for example, using cat pounce protectors, which has dramatically reduced the preying of birds and other mammals by hunting cats.
References
Bruce, S. J., Zito, S., Gates, M. C.