Feral Cats: Fural Habitat

In Australia, feral cats are a massive threat to many of their native endangered species, causing the deaths of millions upon millions of animals in incredibly short amounts of time. The worst part is that getting rid of these cats that originally came from the time that Europeans arrived is near impossible. This is until recently, John Read, an Australian ecologist, finished creating four robotic “grooming traps” after seven years of inventing. It wasn’t a simple design, as it took a great load of research and time to make. The trap works by first playing a sound of a typical feral cat’s prey, such as rats. This is because feral cats are hesitant to eat bait, and would much rather kill an animal. When the cat approaches the machine after the sound is played, a poison classified as “1080” is sprayed on the it.

A flaw that might be taken away from this are the machines possibly killing native Australian animals. This is however not likely because the poison “1080” is actually commonly found in Australian plants, so it barely affects native animals, which the feral cats are not. It is also unlikely an animal other than a feral cat would lick itself after being sprayed with poison. To test his invention, John Read used a camera instead of poison in the trap to see which animals would approach it. After it was a success, Read placed a grooming trap in the Pullen Pullen reserve in Australia to test if it would kill a cat in an area with endangered animals. Along with this, he placed more in two other