Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 9, 2026
09:12
The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress
Published on: July 4, 2013
Risk behaviours exhibited by free-roaming cats in a suburban US town
K A T Loyd1, S M Hernandez, K J Abernathy
1Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
The Veterinary Record
|August 6, 2013
Summary
Free-roaming pet cats frequently engage in risky outdoor behaviors like road crossing and encountering other animals. Male and younger cats exhibit more hazardous activities, suggesting a need for increased indoor time or supervision.
Area of Science:
- Veterinary Medicine
- Animal Behavior
- Ecology
Background:
- Free-roaming domestic cats face significant outdoor risks, including vehicular trauma, inter-animal aggression, and disease transmission.
- Understanding the specific activities and environmental exposures of outdoor cats is crucial for pet safety and public health.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantitatively assess the outdoor activities and risk behaviors of free-roaming pet cats.
- To identify cat-specific characteristics (age, sex, habitat) that predict engagement in risky behaviors.
- To inform strategies for mitigating outdoor hazards for domestic cats.
Main Methods:
- Utilized 'KittyCam' video cameras, a type of Crittercam, to record a cat's-eye view of outdoor activities in suburban Georgia.
- Monitored 55 owned, free-roaming cats across all four seasons to capture diverse behaviors and environmental conditions.
- Analyzed video data to document the type, frequency, and context of risk-taking behaviors.
Main Results:
- The most common risk behaviors included road crossing (45%), encountering unfamiliar cats (25%), consuming unknown substances (25%), exploring storm drains (20%), and entering house crawlspaces (20%).
- Male cats demonstrated a higher propensity for engaging in risk behaviors compared to females.
- Younger cats were observed to exhibit more risk behaviors than older cats.
Conclusions:
- Outdoor environments present numerous hazards for free-roaming cats, with significant proportions engaging in dangerous activities.
- Cat sex and age are significant predictors of risk-taking behavior, with males and younger cats being more vulnerable.
- Findings support recommendations for increased indoor confinement or supervised outdoor access to enhance cat safety and welfare.
Related Concept Videos
02:09Bystander Effect
The discussion of bullying highlights the problem of witnesses not intervening to help a victim. This is a common occurrence, as the following well-publicized event demonstrates. In 1964, in Queens, New York, a 19-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked by a person with a knife near the back entrance to her apartment building and again in the hallway inside her apartment building. When the attack occurred, she screamed for help numerous times and eventually died from her stab wounds.
01:41Social Traps
Social traps are negative situations where people get caught in a direction or relationship that later proves to be unpleasant, with no easy way to back out of or avoid. The concept was orignally introduced by John Platt who applied psychology to Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons", where in New England herd owners could let their cattle graze in the common ground. This situation seems like a good idea, but an individual could have an advantage. If they owned more cows, the larger...
01:05Instinctive Drift
Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to their innate behaviors despite repeated reinforcement. Breland and Breland demonstrated this concept in an experiment with a raccoon. The raccoon was trained to pick up two coins and place them in a container in exchange for food. Initially, the raccoon learned to associate the coins with food, making them a conditioned stimulus or a substitute for food. However, over time, the raccoon became less willing to put the coins into the...
02:30Naturalistic Observations
If you want to understand how behavior occurs, one of the best ways to gain information is to simply observe the behavior in its natural context. However, people might change their behavior in unexpected ways if they know they are being observed. How do researchers obtain accurate information when people tend to hide their natural behavior? As an example, imagine that your professor asks everyone in your class to raise their hand if they always wash their hands after using the restroom. Chances...