By Susan Milius
People often assume cats enthusiastically kill city rats, but that may be just an urban legend.
Feral cats caught on video were keen to watch rats lurking around a trash collection center in Brooklyn, says behavioral ecologist Michael Parsons. But cats rarely killed, or even chased, the rats. Cats aren’t a good choice for rat-population control, Parsons, a visiting researcher at Fordham University in New York City, and colleagues suggest September 27 in Frontiers in Environment and Ecology.