Seasonal Movement Patterns of Urban Domestic Cats Living on the Edge in an African City
Journal Article
2023-03-10
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Animals
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Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
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Abstract
How domestic cats use open spaces around their homes is unstudied in Africa,
and this has conservation implications given their high rate of predation on native prey. We GPStracked a sample of cats in summer and winter to understand habitat and area use and distances
travelled. Since Cape Town surrounds the Table Mountain National Park (TMNP), we also determined
how often cats ventured into protected areas. A far greater proportion of cats (59% of 78) returned
prey home in summer than winter (30% of 27), and summer ranges were significantly greater and ca.
three-fold larger than those in winter (3.00 ha vs. 0.87 ha). Urban-edge (UE) cats travelled up to 850 m
from their homes and both urban (U) and UE cats entered natural habitat. All seven GPS-collared
UE cats (and one of seven U) ventured into protected areas in summer and two of four UE (and two
of five U) cats did so in winter. Thus, our data suggest that cats may regularly hunt in protected
areas, especially in summer. Yet they may also limit the time spent in such habitats due to predation
risk from meso-carnivores. The threat to biodiversity in protected areas by owned cats necessitates
further layers of protection. Cat-free buffers of ~600 m, based on the average movements reported
here, may reduce domestic cat predation in protected areas.
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Reference:
Simmons, Robert E., Seymour, Colleen L., George, Sharon T., Peters, K., Morling, F. & 2023. Seasonal Movement Patterns of Urban Domestic Cats Living on the Edge in an African City. Animals. 13(6):1013. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/39497