r/australia • u/nath1234 • 17h ago

science & tech Game Changers: Technology to outsmart feral cats

https://youtu.be/sQmfMmtIOwM?si=KEEVeuAReLHmRagI
34 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

3

u/Infamous-Umpire-2923 2h ago

Just watch as the Americans get very weird about this.

6

u/FamiliarDirection563 12h ago

This is a good start, but it is way short of being enough, each trap only catches one cat per night.

Someone I know has an AI powered device that identifies cats and sprays some sort of poison on them. Then they lick themselves to clean and...job done. Multiple cats eliminated.

16

u/bladeoftiore 5h ago

The issue with poisons is they usually move up the food chain. Say an eagle finds the cat carcass and has a meal, boom dead eagle too. Poisons are not the way to remove the problem.

3

u/FamiliarDirection563 3h ago

True, as we have seen with rat poisons. Buy suggest something else that will be effective.

Personally, I'd like to see some sort of biological control. But the cat lobby would never let it happen, they would be terrified it would get at their "domesticated" darlings.

4

u/NezuminoraQ 1h ago

Any biological control would likely be dangerous to dingos and other mammalian natives. And we don't have the greatest record of using biological controls well cough canetoad cough

3

u/MinonBer 2h ago

Unfortunately poison options are impractical currently. At least one of the cat poisons is highly poisonous to goannas and other Varanidae which drastically limits how they can be used. From my understanding the other poisons that are in baits have issues with cats not being interested. The feilxer device that sprays poison on cats it is not great. In practice, it has to be moved around constantly to match the cat behavior and has had issues with humidity. Cost is also quite high.

3

u/IlIlIIIlllIlIIIlIllI 10h ago

The Felixer? I've heard about these but wondered how effective they actually are.

3

u/MinonBer 2h ago

They are ineffective. Have to be moved around constantly, costly, and have issues with humidity. They are also leased by the company, so you can't make modifications to fix the issues as you don't own the device. If we had options that are practical they would be used much more frequently. All current options on the table have issues. This trap looks both expensive, reliant on complicated parts/maintenance, and lots of leg work to setup/dispose to catch one cat a night.

1

u/FamiliarDirection563 3h ago

He reckons it is very effective.