Hey Eva come on over here want me to brush you? Hey sweet kitty….
This is CrowdScience from the BBC World Service,
the show that takes your science questions for a prowl and hunts down the answers.
I’m Melanie Brown, and this is Eva, the feline muse behind this week’s question.
Did you wanna play? Get ready! Oh! If you didn’t run into me you could maybe catch it.
Oops. Oh nearly got it!
Eva loves to play, and has the ultimate pampered life within the 4 walls of her
apartment in Kobe Japan. Oh, where did it go?
But is it maybe… too comfortable? Watching her play one day, her devoted human owner
Rachel – or should that be employee? - decided to get in touch with CrowdScience.
I'm wondering if my former street cat could survive out on her own again. Conveniently my
cat is behind my computer. Let's see, can we oh, there she is. Hi Eva!
And can you tell me a bit about her? Why, why did you ask that question?
RASo she was born on the streets, and a lady I know, rescues street kittens and
finds homes for them. Eva was maybe about five months old when the lady finally caught her.
And then it was about a month later that she came to our house. Like the first week she just hid
behind the washing machine. But it didn't take very long before she kind of warmed up to us
and got comfortable living inside. What makes you doubt her ability
to survive by herself? We noticed like when she plays
she would sometimes like fall off of the furniture like not use her claws to catch herself.
Or when she jumps sometimes she misses where she’s landing. And her reaction time is kind of
hilariously slow. Which made my husband asked me like if we threw her back on the streets - would
she survive? And I really couldn’t answer that. But Eva is my first indoor only cat so that that
also made me wonder if she kind of got more domesticated than our cats that went
outside where they could still hunt if they wanted to or maybe defend themselves against
something. You know she's totally relaxed in here. She has she has no enemies other
than you know my one year old daughter. I was really interested in this question
because my cat Frida also has questionable survival instincts. The only thing she’s gifted
me was a dragonfly, and…. I think it might have already been dead before she caught it.
Don’t get offended Frida, you can believe what you want, I still love you. Anyway,
it’s good news for the neighbourhood wildlife if they don’t have to worry about you.
But to help answer Rachel’s question, I went to meet a cat who really does
know how to handle herself outside the home I came across this cat by sheer chance because I
just was walking along here and sitting gloriously and window looking at very smug with a cat with
a collar who got completely content. So by sheer chance we knocked on the door.
You basically talent spotted the cat I talent spotted the cat.
That’s Roger Tabor, cat biologist and behaviourist.
His pioneering work tracking cats by attaching GPS and mini cameras to them,
helped our understanding of cat behaviour inside and outside the home – how far they roam
and what they get up to out of our sight. And we’re here to meet one of his research
subjects…. Queen of the Neighbourhood…. Allow me to introduce Scrumpy. Hello, Scrumpy..
Scrumpy literally just put her paws right up on your leg in quite sort of friendly,
Hello, Roger! She’s a fantastic cat.
Black and white, quite petite.
Very petite.
Oh, wow, looking at me with big golden eyes. So Roger we’re here because of our
listener Rachel's question about how well her cat would survive if it had to fend for itself
in the in the wild, and Scrumpy’s going to help us understand cat behaviour. You've put
cat cam is it yes, a cat sat, that is a tongue twister, isn't it?
You've put GPS tracker and a camera on Scrumpy. And you've followed her on her adventures
outside of the house, what have you found out about what she's up to?
Indoors she's quiet, cute. If you look at her now she's sitting on her own Jo's lap in a contented
way. When you get outside, with a normal female cat, and particularly small female cat as she is,
you would expect a small range. And the most startling thing we’ve found, she goes around
a much bigger range - 10 times bigger than it should be. She goes up onto that little small
shed, and then onto the fence behind. And then the world is her oyster, she uses the tops of
fences along the bits there, suddenly you’re into much more varied areas there, going down, finding
chicken carcasses, pulling them out. And there is a garden, which has got Rottweilers in it!
Rottweilers pretty big dogs, Which are known to be short fused.
She goes over there quite quite happily. There’s a yew tree which she’ll sit under for hours. And
gradually you build up how she leads her life. fade under
MEL: While we were around, Scrumpy wasn’t going to go on the prowl – obviously she had to keep
a watchful eye on us and live up to the cat stereotype of doing exactly the opposite of
what we wanted her to. So Roger showed us one of her adventures recorded on her CAT CAM.
Be warned. Oh no. The camera
angle’s incredible actually, you get a little glimpse of the nose and her whiskers sneaking in
there … Right so this looks like woodland Roger. It's a normal garden. There's a lot of trees,
so she's made this as a great place to go and sit in and relax in
but it's not necessarily always just hers. So she’s quite low to the undergrowth.
That's quite dramatic. But what's actually happening
is not a full fight. So wait, we just saw
another cat come into view then If you see how that other cat
just exploded and it's a big adult male and the claws are really out. But what you're seeing
now is that big adult cat saving face, it's the one that's going away. When actually the
cat who is in residence who's won is tiny Scrumpy. She is a fraction of his size.
She is a female cat, she should not be seeing off a big male, tough cat like that. But she does.
Scrumpy is clearly quite a different beast from my meek cat Frida or listener Rachel’s Eva.
So how come she is quite so feisty, which as Roger says is very unusual for a small female cat?
Yeah, this is a huge question. And it's what makes me so fascinated about Scrumpy
more than any other cat. There might be genetically a predisposition to be slightly more
spiky if you like. But her upbringing was key, because it was a fairly rough household.
She was found living in the back of a sofa with these other litter mates. There were
some large dogs there as well. So just surviving at all, she had to be a bit of a tough cookie.
A cat’s kittenhood, Roger explained, shapes its survival skills. Scrumpy obviously got
good at defending herself, and hunting is another thing that a kitten learns early on.
When you're about four weeks of age mum starts bringing in initially very dead prey.
And then, slightly less dead prey. And you will, by competing with her, you will as a little kitten
learn from your Mum what to do. The cat is an animal that has this capability of hunting,
yes you’ve got those wonderful claws that flick out. You have to be trained how to use it.
So early life has a big effect on how a cat might fend for itself outdoors,
and from what I’ve seen of Scrumpy, I’d say she’d have pretty good survival odds.
As for our listener’s cat Eva? We’ll come back to Roger later in the show to find out how
he rates her chances. But I’m curious to find out more about the wild side of our pet cats.
Cats are well-known for their proud independence, especially when compared
to that other pet favourite, dogs. But though cats do a good imitation of a wild animal,
how similar are they to their actual wild cousins?
So my name is Jamie Baker. I'm the head keeper at Battersea Park Children's Zoo. And today I'm
introducing you to our Scottish Wildcats. So we have two female Scottish Wildcats here we've got
Livvi and we've got Skye. This time of the morning when the sun is shining on
the back of their enclosure they like to be up nice and high. So they've got quite
a good view of everything around them. So Jamie, you've got a metal container
in your hand with a lot of fluff poking out the top. What is that?
So I've got some rabbit, we give them a mixture of different meat and fish throughout the week,
similar to what they would eat out in the wild and rabbit is their favourite. Still have the fur on!
Literally is feeding time at the zoo. That squirrel is just
outside the enclosure, it's really taunting cats.
It would definitely be lunch if it was inside! They still do occasionally
catch their own food as well. Haven’t lost their skills.
And I'm just gonna head inside now. Where are the cats? Are they going to follow him?
Oh, he’s just thrown the rabbit onto the platform right next to
one of the cats but she won't be able to see it. Oh she is.
Oh! She's grabbed it and she’s run off. She’s going to be nice and secretive
and take it back to bed. Breakfast in bed, very sensible.
So it's interesting looking at these cats, they’re sort of striped, tawny coloured, they do look
very similar to my pet cat, to domestic cats. How closely related are these are the Scottish
Wildcats to the cats we have in our homes? To the untrained eye, physically Scottish
Wildcats look very similar to a domestic moggie. But it's mostly down to the personality and
genetics. Our domestic cats that we have at home are more related to wild descendants from Africa.
In terms of their behaviour? They're much more feisty, quite like their name
suggests they are very wild. And would they be tameable?
Definitely not. There are lots and lots of records from many, many years ago of people
saying that they've been able to tame a Scottish wildcat, but it's actually never been proven.
By nature, they do not get on with humans very well. Whereas our domestic cats have evolved to
be alongside humans, whether that be taking food from us or just living around humans.
Scottish wildcats are very much evolved for life out in the wilds away from human civilization.
This is a key difference. True wildcats can never be tamed,
while the domestic cat will be friendly if it gets used to us in the first few months of life.
On the other hand, if born in the wild, that same domestic species can live completely independently
of humans. But these feral cats are causing serious problems for the Scottish wildcat…
At the moment Scottish wildcats are actually one of the most critically endangered animals
on the planet. At one point, they were spread right across Britain, and it's estimated after
a big study in 2018 that there is only around 30 to 100 Scottish Wildcats left up in the highlands.
Today, the main reason for them disappearing is actually hybridization with feral cats. So
feral cats are basically domestic cats that have rediscovered their wild side. And they're living
out in natural habitats hunting for themselves, and they're breeding with Scottish Wildcats,
and we're ending up with fewer and fewer pure Scottish Wildcats left out in the wild.
The Scottish wildcats here are part of a UK-wide captive breeding programme,
that plans to release wildcats from next year into rewilding enclosures in Scotland,
where hopefully they’ll be protected from feral cats.
We’re focusing in this show on whether our listener’s cat could survive in the wild, but it’s
important to consider the effect on other animals’ survival, if domestic cats are let loose….
Our domestic cats do quite well out in the wild looking for their own food.
But not only are they hybridising, with Scottish Wildcats, and we're losing an iconic predator,
but they also hunt small birds and rodents and amphibians that
are also quite rare in this country. And because domestic cats aren't
a natural part of our food chain, they have quite a negative impact on our environment.
So the Scottish wildcat is critically endangered, while the domestic cat can act
as an invasive species, threatening wildlife in Scotland as well as many other places.
They really have conquered the world – so how did this happen?
Let’s take step back into evolutionary history
and find out what drew wildcats to hang out with us humans in the first place.
Will we find evidence of mummified chewed up shoelaces?!
The wild ancestors of almost all domestic cats is the wild cat from Southwest Asia,
and Northern Africa. It’s a solitary animal - they hunt rodents,
they hunt snakes, they hunt scorpions, naturally.
Dr Eva-Maria Geigl is a Research Director of the CNRS in Paris, studying
ancient DNA to investigate cats’ evolution and domestication.
Before the dawn of the Neolithic, which was when humans started farming,
each subspecies of wildcats, was very localised to their own part of the world.
For example, Europe had the ancestors of the Scottish wildcats we’ve just met.
But then, something changed. Dr Geigl picks up the story when these early farmers went on the move.
Around 8000 years ago, when Neolithic farmers migrated out of what is nowadays, Turkey,
so Anatolia, in archaeological sites that testify the presence of the first farmers from Anatolia
that came into Europe, we found cat remains that were not the type of the European Wildcat.
So this indicated that these cats came with the Neolithic farmers.
One of the examples that is always cited is the first archaeological finding on Cyprus,
an island in the eastern Mediterranean that was not inhabited by any feline species before the
Neolithic. And at the beginning of the Neolithic, archaeologists have found a burial of a child,
with a cat. Now we cannot say whether this cat was a wild cat, or tamed cat, but we can say that
this cat came with these first Neolithic farmers because a cat will never swim to the island of
Cyprus through the Mediterranean Sea. And this means there was a special relationship between
these cats and the first farmers. Now, how can we imagine that this relationship was acquired? Well,
we can imagine that the first farmers started to accumulate grains. And of course, if you
have an accumulation of seeds, grains, you will attract rodents. But this also attracted cats,
the wild cats that were living in the environment around, and those cats who were the least afraid
of the human presence, they would have run after the rodents and really feast on these rodents.
So the cats that were the least shy would have started to just live with these early farmers who
must have been delighted to have these cats around killing rodents, they were killing snakes and
scorpions. And this is how we imagine that this relationship between cats and humans started.
Cats were also crucial for humans as they started to migrate overseas.
They killed the rodents on board ships, thus protecting the precious food stores, sails,
even the wood of the ship itself. So where humans travelled, so did cats – though if you’ve ever
tried to get a cat near water you might suspect they got them onboard in a rather coercive way.
But it was quite unlike the domestication of dogs,
who were selected and bred for different tasks. The cats were just doing what came naturally.
So the cats were not particularly changed by humans. There was no need. I always say cats were,
from the very beginning, perfect for humans. They did exactly what humans wanted them to do.
So there was no need to select any particular character or trait of these cat. And there was no
further change in the in the genomes. Except, the behaviour. Cats are solitary animals.
And domestic cats are not as solitary. They tolerate humans,
more or less. And they tolerate other cats more or less. So there must have been a change in the
behaviour. They became less afraid of humans, less shy. This is something we would like to see
in the genome but behaviour is very complex, these behavioural traits are encoded in multiple genes.
And this is not very well known yet. EVA-Maria and her team are continuing to research
the DNA of cats across time, to try and tease out those changes associated with domestication.
But it strikes me that those cats bold enough to approach granaries thousands of years ago
have ended up with an evolutionary advantage over their wild counterparts. Instead of having
to track down small creatures far and wide, they now had the cat equivalent of a convenience store.
The wild cats have a disadvantage. I mean, you see already the numbers - there are
600 million cats in the world, and the wild cat is on the edge of extinction. So of course,
as any domestic animals, they are evolutionarily winners. And then when you look at
regions where no felines have lived naturally, like in Australia, like in New Zealand,
and cats are brought into these environments, they thrive and they destroy endemic fauna.
So they are really ferocious, invasive species. They succeed very well compared to wild cats.
Is the ability to sidle up to humans maybe just as much - or even more of a survival
trick than those hunting instincts that our listener’s cat Eva seems to be lacking?
Back with cat behaviourist Roger Tabor, we see how that plays out,
as we watch more of cat Scrumpy’s greatest hits.
This is some gardens over. And this is not her house.
Okay, so I can see two houses, she's walking down a path and is definitely
getting closer to one of the houses. But look how she’s exploiting this.
She’s just walked through a doorway. And wait, you said that wasn't her house.
Not her house. This is as the cat found it, because there's no human being involved. So she's
going into a total strangers house. Cat burglar!
And there is a food bowl over there. But Scrumpy’s gone up taken a sniff..
Realised there's no food turned around very quickly.
Absolutely. This is really very adventurous stuff. Her owners had no idea that she moved far
away from just going over the fence. But the fact that she's going many gardens over and then going
into other people's houses came as an absolute revelation. So if you're looking at the survival
of a cat in the big outside world, these are sort of things that they can do only too easily.
She does know how to hunt, but most of all Scrumpy is a bold scavenger. Even though
she’s very well fed and looked after in her own home, these instincts are hardwired.
A cat is a survivor. Even if you've got one that's lived within your house, and you think it could
only possibly live on the best gourmet food all the time, and you tickling it and pampering it,
believe me, at the end of the day, if your cat can eat food from a saucer, it can survive by
scavenging. Bottom line, it can scavenge. But also it's got this other wonderful trick if
it's been properly socialised, so it has become more dependent on humans, what it will do is to
go from garden to garden, house to house until it finds somebody else who, the cat will entreaty,
the voice will be there, it will be so plaintive and, and we just are suckers. And if you are sort
of cat-orientated person, that cat will find a new place. So that's part of its survival package.
It's not just about hunting, exploiting human beings is a great skill to have.
And when you're in a human dense area, like a town surely that's the good way of surviving.
They've worked out they're onto a good thing with us humans.
Well, we're suckers aren’t we?!
This is all sounding hopeful for our listener Rachel’s cat Eva,
who, you might remember, doesn’t seem like the world’s greatest hunter.
So does Roger think she’d survive on the mean streets all on her own?
My gut reaction, of course, is to say yes. All cats are inherent survivors. If by chance she gets
out. Because she's an indoor cat, she doesn't have a map in her mind about what the local area is.
So if something nasty happens while she's outside, so she runs around and runs and runs and gets into
an area she's got no idea where she is, yes, that could be a problem. And will she survive? Yes, she
will survive because she will either do a little bit of hunting, if she's got any of that in her,
by the sounds of things she’s not very good at hunting. Or much more significantly, and she will
go and just scavenge. And if that scavenging is sucking up to somebody and saying, miaow,
that high pitched meow gets into us. So how can we refuse, we're almost preconditioned to want
to behave well. So if you’ve got somebody who really loves cats and a cat comes up to you,
Rachel's little Eva is going to survive.
Eva’s survival tool kit depends on her early life, whether hunting, or scavenging, or winning
humans over. But how well cats survive is also going to be a question of their environment.
Many cats do survive out on their own – a study just released here in the UK
estimated the stray and feral urban cat population at a quarter of a million.
So what about Japan, where listener Rachel and her Eva live?
How do stray cats fare there? Reporter Lucy Craft visited a cat shelter in Tokyo to investigate…
You’re curious. I see you yes! Do you want some meaty stick?
Oh, oh there goes one guy, he's real climber huh? This is like a cat daycare centre. There's just
like all kinds of things to climb up on. There's toys, yes, you can go outside on the balcony.
There's a cage right in front of me and there's a cat happily napping away. There's another
cat just wandering in and out of my legs down here. Here's just a tail sticking out of this…
I think this is timid one. No she’s got a great spot
so she has no complaints... Somebody’s complaining. Hi!
I'm Cheryl Nafthurst-Mori, been working with Japan Cat Network for about 10 years,
and manage our Tokyo logistics and shelter.
I'm Susan Roberts, and I'm one of the co founders for Japan Cat Network.
We help people help stray and abandoned cats in Japan since about the year 2000.
So tell me what was the genesis of your organisation, then?
You know, it started with just finding the situation intolerable,
like finding kittens in parking lots and, and not having a shelter to take any animals to.
So Cheryl, tell me some of the cats that you that you have here at the shelter. How did you
find them? What were their situations? I would say our oldest kitties are two
rescued from Fukushima, Rupert and Judy. They were starving and left to fend for themselves.
So we wanted to bring them into safety… The 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima,
triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami, forced residents to evacuate quickly - and many
had to leave their pets behind. So it was a natural – tragic - experiment in
cats’ ability to survive by themselves. I think we were really shocked at how
many starving animals we found. There's kind of an impression that cats can fend for themselves.
So a lot of people just set the cats free thinking would only be for a short time.
But it was for a long time. And some cats passed away inside houses. And we found many doing badly.
Of course, these were extreme conditions to survive in – a disaster zone, suddenly emptied
of humans, with food sources disappearing overnight. But even here in Tokyo, Susan
says life wouldn’t be easy for a cat who strayed. I don't think they would be able to survive well,
that's not our experience. When we see cats who are living on the streets,
without care, trying to survive on their own, they are not surviving well. They would have to
be lucky enough to find a food source. They're not going to be able to hunt enough, on the streets,
to survive just from hunting. It would depend also were they spayed or neutered, because being spayed
or neutered makes a huge difference as well. Why is that?
Because they have to use resources for reproduction. And they have to fight
and defend their territory. So they have a much shorter lifespan without spay neuter.
I live in Tokyo. I see the hazards facing a cat – there’s traffic, disease, fights with other cats.
I’ve even seen a kitten taken out by a crow. There are a lot of street cats – so many do survive.
But the sheer number of cats is an issue too, because it leads to conflict with humans.
So you’ve got all these cats on the street. And that irritates people. They're noisy,
they're smelly, they're fighting. And so then people kind of take matters into their own hands.
I don't know if this is just my neighbourhood. I live not too far away from here. But whenever
I walk around the neighbourhood, I always see one or two stray cats.
And I've seen particularly elderly women going out opening up cans of tuna - are people just
accustomed to cats being wild on the streets? You generally have somebody who feels sad about
the cats in every community. So the question is, what are they doing about it? People
who are feeding cats are not necessarily spaying or neutering them. None of us wants this many
cats on the street. But the way to reduce them is through trap neuter return. Catching cats,
spaying and neutering them, and putting them back. Now, not everyone agrees with Trap Neuter Return:
putting neutered cats back on the streets, instead rehoming or killing them,
means they still pose some risk to wildlife. But it’s widely accepted as a humane way
to improve street cats’ lives and keep their populations down. In Tokyo official Community Cat
Programmes have been set up where the local cats are spayed or neutered, and residents provide for
their basic needs. Research from Teikyo University has found evidence this does benefit cat welfare.
So - maybe it’s getting a little easier for street cats here. But life is still probably
going to be more comfortable in a home. So if your cat does stray, Susan has some advice.
We hand out a lot of tips because we get contacted a lot. Maybe they made a mistake,
the door wasn't quite closed. I think a lot of people don't understand that cats can open
screens, they can open windows, or they let them out on the balcony, and they go over. So
the most important thing is look for that cat. Cats get trapped in outbuildings, you've got to
talk to people in the neighbourhood, put up posters, you have to call rescues.
They're not going to be out in the open, so they always hide. So if I looked around,
I'd look for maybe a building that had a little crawlspace, I'd look under cars. A lot of times,
if you go out late at night, and you start calling quietly, sometimes they'll come out.
You can often find a cat that's gotten away. Good advice there thanks to Susan and Cheryl
of Japan Cat Network and reporter Lucy Craft. Returning to our listener Rachel’s question,
if she did decide to put Eva out on the streets – and I’m pleased she has
no plans to do so – she’d face all sorts of hazards, but she’d have a chance of survival.
And from what I’ve seen and heard of her, I think it would be her beguiling eyes
and plaintiff miaow that would win the day. Get a little bit more exciting here.
The tempos up, the paw’s out. Ah.. What a cat!
Do you think she would survive if she if she was for some reason back outside in the wild?
Initially, it might be pretty hard for her.
But I bet she could survive... somehow Optimism, I like it. And that happens
to be the subject of next week’s CrowdScience as Marnie Chesterton pits optimism against pessimism,
but to end this show, let’s go back to Rachel – and Eva - for the credits.
That's all for this episode of crowd science from the BBC World Service.
Today's question was from me, Rachel in Japan with a little help from my pet
cat Eva. The show was presented by Melanie brown and produced by Cathy Edwards. If you
have a question you want answered please email crowdscience@bbc.co.uk Thanks for listening Bye.