Cats.
Playful pets, fearsome fighters...
CAT WAILS
..deadly hunters.
They beguile, intrigue and mercilessly exploit us.
But how much do we truly understand these enigmatic creatures?
Millions of us have cats in our homes.
They're one of our favourite pets
and yet we still know very little about them.
Yay, who's a good boy?
In last year's Horizon, we revealed what the cats of one village
got up to once they left the cat flap.
CAT WAILS
Now we're taking it even further.
In a ground-breaking scientific study,
we've asked some of the world's top cat experts to run experiments
investigating the secrets of our feline friends.
What happens in the milliseconds before our cats pounce...
Wow, that's unbelievable.
..and what makes them the gymnasts of the animal kingdom?
We're able to see this for the first time in the last few years.
That is extraordinary.
To delve even deeper into their hidden world, we're fitting
our cats with state-of-the-art tracking devices and cameras.
We're aiming to create the definitive guide to your cat.
And tonight we'll reveal how your cuddly pet can
transform into a hunting, fighting machine.
One of the reasons I love cats is they've clearly still got
this independent wild side.
But just how close are they really to their wild, big-cat cousins?
Do we have a lion in our laps?
We're following 100 cats
in three very different environments
to get an insight into their secret lives.
In the crowded terraces of Brighton, we're tracking city cats like Ozzy,
battling to protect his title as King of the Street.
Ozzy is called Ozzy because of Ozzy Osbourne.
He believes that this is his territory
and he's trying to defend it.
In Rottingdean, village cats like Sandwich
have room to roam and hunt.
We've had mice and a bird and a rabbit, and so far that's all,
but there's lambs in the field nearby, so we never know.
And we're comparing our urban cats with farm cats,
who have to hunt to survive.
All the information comes back to Cat HQ,
where it's pored over by experts...
This is the first 24 hours and you can see all our cats
in different colours and named here.
..so we can build up the most comprehensive
picture of the cat we've ever had.
We're going to start with the wildest cats in our study,
to find out how they hunt.
We're off to David Hicks' farm
where semi-feral working cats are employed to catch rats.
How many cats do you have here now in total?
About 18. 18 cats? Yeah.
And why did you get them originally, David?
The rat population was just totally out of control.
They were getting in the cattle food, digging under
the floor of the shed, it was just absolutely alive with rats.
So we got three half-grown cats from a friend of mine who had some
feral cats, and they've never looked back, the rats are just wiped out.
Filming a hunt is incredibly hard to do.
Shall I do this one? Yeah, definitely.
Just unclip it? Give it a pull.
To help us work out where to put our motion sensitive cameras,
we've put tracking collars and cat-cams on these cats.
These GPS traces show Mr Tom hunting in the hedgerows, while Growler sets
out in the opposite direction, to the stables nearly a kilometre away.
Over the last 24 hours, the cats have spread out across an area
the size of 15 football pitches!
But all the cats still spend a lot of their time
hunting in the farmyard,
so cameraman, Robin, has staked it out with specialist cameras.
Now, all we have to do is sit and wait...
..and wait.
We see foxes, chickens, and lots of cats.
And eventually we capture something that's rarely been filmed.
Cat behaviour expert, Dr John Bradshaw,
wants to see for himself.
Hi, guys. Hi. What have we got so far, then?
Here we go, we've got a little shot here.
A little bit of cat and mouse.
Oooh, that's good, that's very good.
Yes, indeed, that was a really quick kill, surprisingly quick.
It killed it straightaway - in the mouth, done.
Yeah, that was real hunting behaviour,
it's not the kind of thing you might see in a pet cat,
this is real predatory behaviour.
These cats are hunting for their living.
That's how they get most of their calories.
The farm cats prowl the farmyard, watching and waiting,
until they detect mice we can't even see.
Then, with an explosion of raw power, they accelerate and pounce.
The kill is over in under two seconds.
So what is it about a cat's body
that gives it this split-second timing and pinpoint accuracy?
So if we can get the cat.
Hey, Rob.
Here at the Royal Veterinary College,
we're setting up an experiment to find out how your cat manages
to pull off a kill like that.
We're going to analyse exactly how they move.
Last one.
We're placing these dots over Rob's main joints.
We're going to track them with a high-speed camera.
And we're recording the pressure through Rob's paws on a floor pad.
Now we can analyse every step he takes.
Our experiment reveals that Rob rarely straightens his legs.
Rob, come. Good boy.
Unlike dogs, whose legs are much straighter when they move,
cats are almost always in this crouched posture,
even when they run flat out.
So if we look at the skeleton of a domestic cat here,
we can see how the skeleton
is set up to be in this kind of crouched posture,
where the knee is really bent,
the elbow's quite bent, shoulder, hip, so forth,
and that gives the domestic cat
a lot of agility, manoeuvrability and even stealth.
'John Hutchinson's been looking not only at the domestic moggy,
'but the whole cat family.
'To find out just how much a tabby has in common with a tiger...'
TIGER GROWLS
'..he's tested big cats in same way as we tracked Rob.'
Nice, yes.
'From pet cats...
'..through the ocelot...
'..and the tiger...
'he's discovered your cat's posture
'is almost indistinguishable from that of a big cat.
'And it's this crouch that gives them the raw power to pounce.'
In a tiger that we measured at the zoo with a high-speed video,
we can see that cat with that crouched posture just
exploding out of the gate, accelerating really quickly,
because it's got these spring-like, pre-tensed limbs.
What was the time period on that?
How long did it take for him to get from here to here?
Less than half a second, this is slowed down by ten times,
so this animal is just like lightning out of the gate.
'And there's something even more dazzling about your cat -
'its sheer athleticism.
'Cats can jump up to five times their height.
'And in the air, you can see their remarkable flexibility.'
It's a real acrobat, it's twisting through a reflex,
basically, and you can see it's straightening its legs out
and crouching as it hits the ground to absorb the energy, the shock.
And there we have an X-ray.
How do you get an X-ray of a falling cat?
That's a big paradigm shift, I guess, in our field, is that
we're able to now see this for the first time in the last few years.
That is extraordinary.
It gives you such an incredible insight into what's
going on skeletally at every millisecond of the movement.
That is just beautiful.
'This X-ray reveals their extremely flexible spine in motion and
'the fluid way their skeleton moves to give them their perfect poise.
'Our pet cats may be smaller than their big-cat cousins,
'but pound for pound, they're equally powerful.
'And, thanks to their flexibility, in some ways they're even better.'
The backbone of a cat is incredibly limber,
in a domestic cat in particular,
so it's able to do that kind of twisting,
whereas the stiffer spine of a big cat would not be able to do that.
Definitely the athletic ability declines with size
in cats in general.
At the size of a domestic cat, they're amazing,
whereas once you get to the size of a lion or tiger, they're really
pushing the limits of what they can still do without injuring themselves.
'So your pet has the posture of a tiger or lion,
'and is more agile than these astounding predators.
'But it has something else that's just as powerful.
'Instinct.
'Perhaps this could help answer a question that's puzzling
'many of our urban cat owners.'
Our cats no longer have to rely on their hunting capabilities
to get their next meal -
most of them are well fed at home, so why do they continue to hunt?
'To help find out, we've asked our owners to take photos of any
'prey their cats bring home.'
I could have things in three or four times a week
in the summer or the spring.
He's brought in a seagull, a rat, a vole, mice,
frogs, because there's a pond next door, a crow.
What about the hamster?
They've tried to hunt the hamster several times and there have been
three near-death experiences
with the hamster in cat-related activities.
'So far, top of the hunting scoreboard for the urban cats
'is one from the village.
'When she leaves her house, her GPS trace shows her doing a quick
'patrol of the neighbourhood, before heading to the woods to hunt.
'She travels up to 2km a day,
'and is bringing back around three kills a week.'
Well, this is Sandwich, and she's somewhere over a year old.
She's a lovely cat, very friendly,
good company for my three-year-old girl.
But at night, she's a bit of a hunter.
Brings back lots of her own dinner.
We've had mice and a bird and a rabbit, and rats.
And so far that's all, but there's lambs in the field nearby,
so we never know.
When she brings things that are a third of her size back,
it does surprise me a little bit!
HE CHUCKLES, SANDWICH GROWLS
Sandwich has a surprising hunting technique.
It's about two in the afternoon, and she's in the local woods.
Just listen to this.
BIRDS CHIRP
SANDWICH CHIRRUPS
She appears to be mimicking the sounds of birds.
BIRDS CHIRP
SANDWICH CHIRRUPS
CHIRPING AND CHIRRUPING CONTINUE
We can't be sure why she does this,
but could it be an attempt to lure her prey down?
Sandwich's hunting was useful once -
her owners had quite a mouse problem until she arrived.
But they don't need her to hunt any more.
We went through a spell of her catching something on a daily basis
and she refused to eat any cat food at all,
and seemed to prefer fresh produce.
We tried to stop her doing it quite so much by overfeeding her,
and feeding her the best, the most expensive, cat food,
but it hasn't completely stopped it.
Many of our owners have tried to stop their cats hunting
by giving them a lot of pet food.
But can we ever override their hunting instincts?
Back at HQ, cat-behaviour expert Dr Sarah Ellis has
footage of Sandwich chasing a mouse in the hallway of her house.
So, what we see with Sandwich is slightly different from what
we see in free-ranging or feral cats when they're hunting.
They tend to go through a sequence of behaviours
that starts with locating the prey.
They'll then go for the capture and the killing bite and then
they'll manipulate the prey, plucking off the feathers if it's a bird,
or shaking the animal to loosen muscle from bone
and skin from muscle.
And then they'll consume it.
With Sandwich, she spends an awful lot of time manipulating it before
she actually kills it and normally that would be the other way round.
The reason why that might be is
because Sandwich is fed daily by her owners,
her instinct to hunt is still there, but she doesn't feel the need to
do the killing bite because she's not that hungry at this moment.
A cat's appetite affects how quickly they kill...
..but being full doesn't seem to override their desire to hunt.
And for very good reason.
Their wild ancestors relied on hunting to survive.
They couldn't afford to wait until they were starving,
because not all hunting attempts end in a kill.
'Back at the farm, John Bradshaw has asked the farmer to give his
'cats a rare treat - a rabbit they haven't had to catch themselves.
'He wants to show me the wild carnivore hidden inside every cat.
'First at the table is Black And Ginger -
'the mother of two-week-old kittens.'
And all the other cats, are they waiting their turn?
Are they that patient?
They probably wouldn't normally be that patient,
but, as you can see, like just then,
the mothers are really motivated to eat.
They're needing a lot of calories at the moment.
GROWLING
The other cats, they know they're going to get some of it
later on and they're just not so motivated to go in,
they don't want to risk getting a cuff from her.
HISSING
Ohh! She told Mr Fluffy, "Back away from my rabbit."
'Mothers like Black And Ginger with kittens to feed will
'fight for the biggest share of a feast -
'and for cats, a meat source like this one is all the more important.
'They're one of only a handful of mammals that must
'eat it to survive.'
They need a lot of protein, first of all, because, unlike you or I,
or indeed a dog, they can't switch off breaking down protein.
So they literally have to take in protein every day
just to get enough calories.
But they also need animal protein, because for a start
they've got quite short guts that don't digest protein very well,
but also they need some amino acids that we don't need, and the key
one is one called taurine, which is essential for their health.
Now, we make as much taurine as we need to in our own bodies,
and cats can't do that.
So one of the things they need to get from animal protein, from meat,
is that essential amino acid taurine.
'Along with taurine, there are 18 other nutrients cats can only obtain
'from meat, while we humans - and even dogs -
'can get them from vegetables.'
It doesn't seem like a great evolutionary strategy, in a way?
No, it's something that the ancestor of the whole cat family
many millions of years ago lost, the ability to live on plant protein,
and once lost that kind of ability never reappears, so this is true
of the whole cat family, they're all basically locked into eating meat.
'Cats don't waste any of their prey.'
So, are they going to absolutely polish off that entire animal,
bones and all?
I'm sure between them they will,
yes, indeed, and the carcass will give them all sorts of nutrients.
It'll give them calcium, from the way
they're crunching up the bones, and it will also give them water.
Cats are notorious for not drinking very much,
and in fact, evolutionarily speaking, they'd have got most of their water
from the flesh that they ate, and they wouldn't need to drink at all.
'Our cats' wild ancestors could survive only on fresh meat.
'They even evolved more efficient kidneys,
'so they could get all the water they needed from the prey they ate.
'This wild hunting heritage is present in every cat,
'from the largest tiger to the smallest moggy.
'Our cats' hunting instinct may never completely go away,
'but it's possible that in the future their hunting drive
'could diminish.'
As recently as 30 years ago, our cats had no choice
but to hunt to stay healthy,
because pet foods didn't contain all the nutrients they needed.
But now that we understand just what specialised meat eaters
they are, and we provide everything they need in their food,
does this mean that in, say, another 30 years, they will hunt less?
It's just one way living with us
in our 21st-century world could tame our cats' wild side.
We're halfway through our month-long study,
so what have our cats been up to?
The GPS tracking results show that, in the city, cats like Paddy
and Sparky rarely travel more than 50 metres from home.
The village cats go a bit further,
with some like Sandwich exploring over 300 metres from her house.
And the farm cats go the furthest, with Black And Ginger
and Growler ranging over a kilometre from the farm.
The distances they cover may be very different in the three environments,
but there's one similarity.
All our cats seem to be treading well-worn paths,
following the same routes again and again.
What's the time frame here, is that in a day, or what's going on?
So that's several days' data combined together now.
And what's most striking to me about this is that the colours
are going out in the same direction every day, so each cat has a routine.
It actually has a preferred hunting route, which it does day after day
after day after day.
'By sticking to the same tracks, our cats are staying off each
'other's turf, dividing up all three sites into separate territories.
'And in the city, where space is tight, they have developed an even
'more sophisticated way of sharing it.'
So, if we look at the cats here,
you can see they are separated into separate areas geographically,
and they may also be separated in time.
So it's mine in the morning and it's yours in the afternoon,
so if we have a sort of time sharing,
especially if they start having a high density in a certain area,
then are those territories overlapping?
No, because they're separated in time.
Territory is incredibly important to cats.
Dividing up their space means they can avoid meeting each other.
And, crucially, if they don't meet, they won't have to fight.
Generally, if you're a cat, you don't want to have a fight,
because it's costly for you - you may well get injured,
you might get killed.
So, it's more about drawing up the boundaries and subdividing
the terrain so that you don't meet the neighbouring animals.
We've seen how similar our cats are physically to big cats...
..and there are also surprising similarities
when it comes to patrolling their territories...
..according to big cat expert Teague Stubbington.
Tigers need to establish a territory in which to live.
What we usually end up with is a situation where one male tiger
will have a territory that overlaps several females',
so they don't compete too much but they're aware of each other.
Tigers lead solitary lives,
and claim their territory by marking it with scent.
This can be picked up by other tigers without meeting face to face.
So they have very similar scent glands to domestic cats,
in their cheeks, their head, their anal glands, feet as well,
so they can lay scent.
They deposit that in different ways. Males will sometimes urinate,
deposit some scent on the floor and then scrape it with their back legs
to leave a physical and also olfactory marker to other tigers.
If you're in the jungle,
you can smell tiger urine and it is very strong -
you know where a tiger's been.
I've had the pleasure of smelling a lot of tiger scent on trees,
and I love the smell, because it's strong
but it's quite sweet, it's very rich.
It's a very musky smell.
I think it's lovely.
Lynx scent, on the other hand, is bitter and awful.
Tiger scent is very good!
For tigers, scent marks individual territories
and prevents them meeting and having to fight off other tigers.
But not all big cats want to avoid each other.
So, if you think about lions in the African savanna,
they have larger prey items that they feed upon,
much larger prey items,
so they need to co-operate to be able to kill and bring down their prey.
They also have a lot more in the way of competition,
so lions, as a pride, can defend their kill against hyenas, leopards,
whereas tigers live in a different environment,
they don't have that same competition.
Tigers live solitary lives in the forest...
..while lions co-operate in prides on the savanna.
Big cat territorial behaviours
have evolved to suit the environment they live in.
But where do our domestic cats fit into this picture?
Back in Cat HQ, the team has been trawling through hours of footage.
In the city, they've spotted cats spraying in gardens.
They're using scent to mark their territory, just like tigers do.
But what will they do if there's a dispute,
if territory they've marked overlaps?
You can see the terraced houses. Can we zoom in a bit, please, Harvey?
Alan's picked out the GPS tracks of two cats with territories
that meet right in the middle of the street.
We've got Smudge and...is it Ozzy?
Walking straight along the road.
The two cats are clearly
dividing that street up between them in some way.
They're perfectly capable of ranging right the way up and down the street,
they're choosing not to do so, so there's clearly some sort
of interaction that's preventing them from using the whole street.
Each cat, erm, Smudge and Ozzy,
will probably remember having had stand-offs
somewhere around the middle of the street in the past,
and simply not bother going there because it's too risky.
To get the whole story, they're going to fit them with cat-cams.
Ozzy's street patrols have certainly got him noticed.
Ozzy from Hanover Street, from the other end.
He's a cat that stays out on the road quite a lot.
I think we've seen Ozzy before. Yeah, in the garden.
Comes in for a little play and a cuddle,
sits on the wall, relaxes, enjoys the sunshine.
I definitely recognise Ozzy - beautiful-looking cat.
You know, quite big and proud and "don't mess with me" type thing.
I think I recognise Ozzy.
I think he's the one that Indy likes to attempt to pick on,
but Indy never wins.
I think he sits on cars just opposite our flat.
Ozzy's owner wasn't prepared for her cat's wild side.
I had this, like, idyllic vision of having a cat.
I thought it would be lovely, we'd have a little indoor cat
that would like to sit on my lap.
Ozzy is called Ozzy because of Ozzy Osbourne.
He was never normal.
I realised that once I got him home.
Ozzy will try and attack you at the top of the stairs in the dark -
he will run after you, growling.
I put his name on his cat collar
and then I would get phone calls saying, "Hi, Ozzy's here.
"I'm Bert from the fish and bait shop.
"I just thought you should know that Ozzy's been here
"and his ear seems a little bit sensitive today,
"so maybe you should take him to the vets."
I'm like "Oh, right, OK, that's where he is."
Then I had students phone up from about four or five houses down
saying, "Hey, I just thought you should know, Ozzy's here,
"he's been eating crisps all day with us."
I'm like, "OK."
Then another neighbour from across the street came round
and saw Ozzy in our house,
and went, "Oh, do you know Ozzy as well, does he come in here?"
I'm like, "Yeah, he's our cat."
OZZY MEOWS
Ozzy's not just wandering around -
he's trying to claim the street as his own.
Ozzy believes that this is his territory
and he's trying to defend it,
and when new cats come, or existing kittens grow into young male cats,
then Ozzy feels like he has to defend his territory,
whether that's marking his territory, as I have seen,
and I'm not going to mention where I've seen that happen,
because I don't think my neighbours will like me,
or, like, fighting the other cats, as well.
Why he is like he is? No.
No, no, no. I have no idea at all.
He was like that from the moment we got him.
So it's definitely nature, not nurture.
It's nothing I've done.
I'm quite confident on that. It's not me.
It's definitely him.
It's twenty past ten,
and Ozzy is out on the prowl.
He's a street-smart city cat...
..who's learned to dodge cars in his urban territory.
Next day, he's out at dusk,
still patrolling his end of the street...
when Smudge suddenly appears on a wall.
It's Smudge who backs down and edges past.
Our scientists suspect there's bad blood between these two.
So vet Richard Harvey has invited Ozzy's owners into Cat HQ.
Is Smudge a tabby cat?
Yes, he is, yeah. I think I know Smudge.
Him and Ozzy don't tend to come in contact. Yeah.
I think they've very much got their halves of the street.
I think they worked that out a few months ago -
who was going to be where, and there was... Lots of fights, were there?
Not so much fights, as... Lots of noise. ..lots of noise.
OK. So they've got their own halves. Cool. Ozzy's got his own turf.
He has, he's got his own half. Good street cat.
They're the only two that go on the street, really.
The others are very much confined to their own back gardens,
and if they do go, they'll go four or five gardens down either way
and that's about it.
So he's going pretty far for the cats in the area,
and, like you say, he really is going
up and down, up and down on these streets.
So he is king of the street, then? He is king of the street, yeah.
Because that's much bigger than Smudge's bit, really.
It is! He is winning. OK, that's fine.
King of the street. I knew it.
I knew it.
These city cats have successfully split the street between them,
much like solitary tigers would.
But while we're filming,
this territorial arrangement is disrupted...
by the arrival of another cat.
First he starts appearing during the day.
Then one night he's caught on cat-cam by Smudge,
who's hiding under a car.
YOWLING
After a quick yowling match,
Smudge backs down and races home to safety.
This new cat is trespassing not only on Smudge's turf,
but also on Ozzy's.
Ozzy's losing his throne and he's very grumpy about it.
It's a younger male - a grey cat, who is a fighter -
his ear is notched in a few places,
and he doesn't run away when Ozzy shouts at him.
One night Ozzy's owners have to step in
and break up a fight between him and this new pretender to his throne.
MUSIC: Little Green Bag by The George Baker Selection
He advanced on Ozzy and cornered him.
Erm, so we tried to pick up Ozzy to take him out of that, and Ozzy...
Ozzy attacked.
Ozzy attacked his, er, his cavalry, yes.
Erm, to there was a tetanus injection involved,
and a course of antibiotics, cos there was a small injury
that's healing as we speak. On us, not the cat!
Yes.
The new cat has stolen Ozzy's crown.
To discover why this grey cat is prepared to resort to a brawl,
our scientists are going keep an eye on him.
We'll reveal their findings at the end of the study.
Our urban cats are definitely up for a fight
to protect their patch.
But are the farm cats just as territorial?
MR TOM MEWS
It's the dead of night and Mr Tom is on the prowl,
when he bumps into Little Kit.
Just a friendly nose touch
and they're on their way.
There's no yowling, no fighting.
John reckons there's a good reason the farm cats are friends -
for now.
It's all about the distribution of food.
As soon as the food supply is insufficient
for the number of cats there, you're going to get problems. Yes.
They're going to start competing with one another.
Certainly with tigers and with limited space
you get a lot of territorial behaviour -
there simply isn't enough range for everybody
to get enough prey. This is a crucial difference
between domestic cats and most of the rest of the cat family,
is that domestic cats can exploit these very dense food supplies,
such as the rats in a farmyard, in a way that big cats don't,
where their prey is, generally speaking, much more widely spread
over the environment.
The farm cats hunt alone.
But inside the farmyard, they work together
to protect their territory from intruders.
The cats spend a lot of time in the farmyard,
and that is a commonly defended territory,
and the reason they're defending it is because that's the denning area,
that's where the kittens are going to be born,
and so it's very important for all those females to defend that area
against other cats that might come in and disturb them.
And it's quite interesting -
they're defending this territory together,
so there's social interactions going on, as well, there.
That's right, so it's a communal, shared territory.
You wouldn't be able to distinguish between the territories
of those individual females... OK.
..because the two would literally superimpose one on top of the other.
In the farmyard these cats live together
like a sociable pride of lions...
..whereas in the busy Brighton streets,
our city cats defend their own hard-won patch
like solitary tigers.
Our cats' behaviours on the farm and in the city
show just how well they can adapt to very different environments.
And it's this ability to adapt
that's been hugely important to the cats' success.
But what about in the village?
Here, our cats get access to fields,
but they also live in nice, cosy houses.
So what sort of life do they choose?
The GPS traces reveal
that some village cats
stay as close to home as a city cat...
..while others roam as far as a farm cat.
We've got a cat here
coming down the hedgerow and going into the village -
they're going quite a long way.
The other cat that was moving a long way is Sandwich.
And she's not alone.
It's midnight,
and village cat Saphie is hunting.
She's often out for hours,
even picking up the odd eight-legged hitchhiker.
So why do cats like Saphie and Sandwich
seem to have more of a wild side
than others living in the same village?
Our scientists think the clue
is in the way they catch their prey.
Back at HQ, Sarah Ellis has some incredible footage
of Saphie in action.
What we're seeing here is the first stage,
which is the location, locating that prey.
Ears still moving in all different directions,
being aware of its environment.
Now... Wow, look at those pupils dilating!
Yeah, that was amazing. That's pretty incredible. Yeah!
You know, you don't expect that during the day,
it doesn't really need to do that for general vision,
but that's... That's unbelievable, yeah.
A clear sign of arousal, a heightened sensitivity.
Definitely. As you say, it's not related to light levels,
cos they haven't changed at all, it's all about the prey.
Look at that. Wow.
Her arousal levels are going to be increasing all the time
in this state of preparedness,
because she's really at the last few seconds
before she's about to pounce.
Now this bit, the wobble,
the shaking of the hindquarters -
you see that a lot when they're playing,
when they're actually hunting as well.
Yeah, we do - it's much more exaggerated in play,
and particularly in young cats,
but it is something that we'll always see,
often this treading of the back legs just before they make their strike.
If they've been crouched for a long time,
there's likely to be fatigue building up in those muscles.
It may just be a way of stretching them
and getting them ready before they do their strike forwards.
The final stage of the hunt
is the most revealing.
The pounce.
All of our cats were happy to pounce on the smaller toys
the size of birds or mice...
..but when we brought out the rat, it was a different story.
Most cats backed away.
Only a few - like Saphie - took it on.
I was really surprised.
She was really reacting to them like it was an actual animal
that she had to kill -
she was growling and hissing a little bit.
It was quite a big toy,
I thought she would just leave it alone,
but no, she really went for it.
She'd have it in her mouth and paws
and she'd wrap her whole body around it,
so pulling it out was quite hard.
Catching a rat is quite a skill.
Saphie uses all four paws to pin it down.
And she's one of the only cats in our study who can do this.
Saphie has intrigued our scientists,
so they've invited her owner Hannah into Cat HQ.
In the last two weeks she's brought home three different kills.
Wow! OK. She's brought a shrew... OK. ..also a bird.
And she's definitely eaten some of that. Yeah.
And the last - we weren't sure, some kind of small rodent.
So she's a real hunter. Yeah.
Anything in her background that you can...?
We bought her from a farm, so, her mother, I assume she hunted.
So, that's very typical of a cat that's really an active hunter -
to find in their history that they've had some instruction -
because they, you know, cats aren't very good at hunting
unless they're actually taught how to do it by their mothers.
All cats are born with a powerful instinct to chase after prey.
You can see it in the youngest members of our study.
But an instinct to chase isn't enough.
Before they're a year old,
their mothers will teach them the skills they'll need
to kill their prey.
It's the same for any cat, from tabby to tiger.
Back at the zoo,
these tiger cubs have been picking up tips from their mother.
So, our female, Melati, is sitting just under the tree there,
and you've got the three young cubs
all bundled together just by her side.
I mean, already, at four months of age,
they're pretty big, aren't they?
They are. They've got that true sort of tiger colour
starting to come in. Yeah.
A little bit disproportionate,
so they still have the really big paws that are too big for their body,
but, yeah, they do look like proper little tigers now.
Like our kittens, the tiger cubs' birth was captured on camera.
And it's not long before we can see them
starting to learn the skills they'll need as adult cats.
So the tiger cubs are learning to play-bite,
learning to swat, learning to pounce,
so, some of the behaviours you think in a domestic cat
are quite nice, cute behaviours,
they're actually learning to hunt in that behaviour there,
and practising how the body would move,
practising how they would react.
Tiger cubs stay with their mothers for up to two years -
much longer than kittens of pet cats do.
They've got a huge amount to learn,
so they've got to watch and observe their mother to hunt,
and they've got to learn to hunt themselves.
They need a lot more practice, because the prey are so much bigger.
Yeah, yeah - well, the important thing,
even though the tiger's a predator, the most important thing for it to do
is not to get injured itself,
so it needs to learn to hunt effectively, quickly and efficiently
and to hunt the right animals, as well.
ROOSTER CROWS
Training is crucial for any cats that have to hunt to survive.
Back at the farm, we've managed to capture this on film.
These are Black And Ginger's kittens.
They're now 11 weeks old,
and she's teaching them to fend for themselves.
She sets out on a hunting trip with a ginger kitten.
But the kitten loses interest,
so Black And Ginger tries to persuade with a meow.
SHE MEOWS
The other kittens prove too much of a distraction,
so Black And Ginger goes it alone.
Half an hour later, she's back with her prize.
But she doesn't eat it herself.
She calls for the kittens...
..and eventually one takes the bait.
Toying with the vole is the first stage in learning to kill.
Eventually, Black And Ginger will bring back live prey.
This is how a kitten learns the technique
to capture and kill a mouse, rat or bird.
It's this early training
which probably gave Saphie the skills she needs to catch a rat.
By the end of the study,
she and Sandwich are the joint top hunters of our urban cats.
Our cats have the same hunting instincts as their big-cat cousins,
and they also demonstrate a need to patrol
and protect their own territory.
But while big cats are still clearly wild animals,
our cats have found a way to become pets.
So, how did they adapt and develop the ability to live alongside us?
Unlike wild cats, our pet cats don't seem to be afraid of us.
Some of them actively seek out our company.
Ted!
Like Ted and Dora.
Dora, she is the explorer.
So she's the one that's the most bold, she's the most adventurous.
And she's quite smart, actually.
She does a particular kind of meow -
"Meow! Meow! Meow!"
And she'll just go on and on... Mm. ..until you feed her.
Ted the male cat is a very laid-back individual.
He won't put out effort unless he has to.
So he would major in being the Zen master of relaxation,
stretched out.
You can put Teddy like this
and he'll probably be quite happy to stay like that.
It would be hard to find a cat
more suited to the pampered domestic life than Ted.
First thing I tend to do in the morning is some yoga stretches,
and Ted thinks this is a game invented especially for him.
Any moves that I do he's sort of moving around me -
he will then lie on the ground
and stretch out his arms above his head.
Then I go down into what's called Child's Pose,
where you sit back on your feet,
and he will find a gap behind my legs, under my bum.
He doesn't actually understand the yoga moves,
but he's got his own Ted moves.
This is my yoga companion.
Ted and Dora interest our scientists
because, despite being model pet cats,
they were born just half a mile away
in very different circumstances.
They're farm cats.
That year there were 36 kittens born at the farm,
and at that stage we already had two cats,
so I said to David the farmer, "We don't need any more cats."
But Ted kept coming and sitting on my foot
and every time I picked him up
he put his paws up to my face and gave me the look of love.
So, really, then I said, "Oh, Rich, look -
"this cat's so sweet. What do you think?"
And Richard, like a...like a twerp, said, "Oh, maybe, yeah."
They like being with us -
if we do sit down in the evening, they're straight with us.
Oh, Teddy!
There you are. Oh, Ted!
Despite starting life as a farm cat,
Ted's now completely shunning his humble roots.
You can even see this in his GPS trace.
OK, so I'll pull up their traces here.
Ted doesn't roam as far as the farm cats -
and despite living just 600 metres from them across the fields,
he never goes back.
In fact, he spends a lot of time in his own garden -
more like a city cat.
It just represents a remarkable transformation.
I mean he's, what, two years old, you say? Yes.
So he is genetically pretty much identical to the farm cats,
and yet the lifestyle, the way he moves around his environment,
is just completely different.
They're venturing out quite long distances to go hunting,
whereas Teddy is just behaving like a pet cat.
So, just how did Teddy become so gentrified?
Dr Rachel Casey thinks
you can help a cat temper its wild instincts
with the right sort of training.
She's been helping this rescue centre
prepare their kittens for domestic life.
These gorgeous things are about four weeks old.
One of the most important parts of the process
is introducing the kittens to people.
MEWING
So the key thing is to make sure that they're happy
with your contact first.
So what we would do is just kind of just gently stroke them
a little bit and making sure they're happy.
And then support them well,
but just lift them a little bit off the ground and pop them on your lap.
Too adorable.
And the other thing that we're starting to do with them at this age
is things like looking in their ears -
the kind of things they would have to experience
if they're going to the vets.
Rather than just indulge my need to cuddle kittens,
I could actually help this little fella out
and manipulate his ears, lift his tail,
so he won't be freaked out at the vets...
You preferred my knee, did you?
A crucial time in the development of a kitten
is from two to eight weeks old.
It's called the socialisation period.
It's basically a biological period where the brain is developing, OK?
The cat is what we call an altricial species,
which means that the young are born poorly developed,
and the disadvantage of that is that they're dependent on their mum
for the first part of life - they're kind of helpless.
But the advantage is that the period of development
that would happen in the womb
in a more fully developed species like the horse
happens in the outside world,
and that means that the outside world has an influence on that development.
And what happens if you don't socialise kittens
at the crucial time?
They're much more likely to be anxious
about new things they come across later in life.
And it can result in problems like avoidance, aggression
or stress-related behaviours
like over-grooming and that kind of thing.
So it can be, you know,
the difference between a happy, contented household cat
and a cat with serious problems.
To curb their wild side,
these kittens will have all kinds of new experiences
before they leave the rescue centre -
meeting men, women, and children...
..sniffing cloths that smell like other cats or dogs...
..and hearing everything from a baby's cry...
BABY CRIES
..to a vacuum cleaner.
VACUUM CLEANER DRONES
The centre is making the most of the time
when kittens can acclimatise to new and strange things,
while their brains are still growing.
It's pretty incredible to think that inside this tiny kitten brain,
new nerve cells are being made,
synapses are being formed in their millions,
and if you get the socialisation right,
at the right time and properly,
you can ensure that these little guys...
are going to get the absolutely best welfare
and best quality of life that they deserve.
Isn't that right?
Oh, that's it. I'm in love.
It's all over.
The difference between the domesticated bliss
of ex-farm cats Ted and Dora
and their relatives just half a mile away on the farm
is also down to those critical first two months.
MEWING
Farmer David Hicks has found out the hard way
that he has to get his kittens used to people
in order to give them away as pets.
OK, so...
Are you sure it's OK to handle them? Yeah, it's fine.
KITTEN MEWS Oh, you little munchkin.
Sh-sh-sh...
Oh, you little...
Two and a half weeks old. ..beauty.
Oh, my God. We try and get them quiet
just so we can re-home them to domestic homes.
If they don't get handled, when you go to pick one up,
it'll spit and hiss at you,
whereas if you give them a bit of food
and get them used to human interaction
then they soon quieten down.
OK, so I'm helping you have a better life
so you're not as stressed when you get your owners.
Just adorable.
Let's put him back in
with his siblings now.
Bye-bye, little one.
Oh!
From humble beginnings on the farm,
our cats can adapt to the lifestyle of a pampered pet.
But the extraordinary thing about the domestic cat
is that it can easily switch back into a wild lifestyle.
The domestic cat, despite its name,
is not actually a fully domesticated species.
It retains a lot of the abilities of the wild ancestor,
so that it can flip between
a fully-hunting, almost wild-type existence
to a very domesticated existence,
curled up by somebody's fire, literally within a generation or two.
The domestic dog doesn't do at all well
if it's put into a feral lifestyle,
and doesn't reproduce particularly well, either.
So the domestic dog has gone down the whole way
to the end of domestication - fully domesticated.
The domestic cat is still perhaps only halfway.
And this is what makes our cats unique.
From defending their territory...
..to the food they eat...
..the structure of their bodies
and the way they move...
we see their wild side every day.
CAT YOWLS
But they've also learned to live with us
and that extraordinary advantage
has allowed them to become one of our favourite pets.
Next time, we'll discover how cats communicate...
..and we'll find out the effect
our 21st-century lifestyle
is having not just on our cats...
THEY YOWL
..but on us.
Meow!
SHE ROARS
SHE HISSES
That doesn't sound anything like a cat.
LAUGHS: I think it does!