This is CrowdScience from the BBC World Service,  

the show that takes your science questions  for a prowl and hunts down the answers. 

I’m Melanie Brown, and this is Eva, the  feline muse behind this week’s question. 

Did you wanna play? Get ready! Oh! If you  didn’t run into me you could maybe catch it. 

Oops. Oh nearly got it! 

Eva loves to play, and has the ultimate  pampered life within the 4 walls of her  

apartment in Kobe Japan. Oh, where did it go? 

But is it maybe… too comfortable? Watching  her play one day, her devoted human owner  

Rachel – or should that be employee? -  decided to get in touch with CrowdScience. 

I'm wondering if my former street cat could  survive out on her own again. Conveniently my  

cat is behind my computer. Let's  see, can we oh, there she is. Hi Eva! 

And can you tell me a bit about her?  Why, why did you ask that question? 

RASo she was born on the streets, and a  lady I know, rescues street kittens and  

finds homes for them. Eva was maybe about five  months old when the lady finally caught her.  

And then it was about a month later that she came  to our house. Like the first week she just hid  

behind the washing machine. But it didn't take  very long before she kind of warmed up to us  

and got comfortable living inside. What makes you doubt her ability  

to survive by herself? We noticed like when she plays  

she would sometimes like fall off of the  furniture like not use her claws to catch herself.  

Or when she jumps sometimes she misses where  she’s landing. And her reaction time is kind of  

hilariously slow. Which made my husband asked me  like if we threw her back on the streets - would  

she survive? And I really couldn’t answer that. But Eva is my first indoor only cat so that that  

also made me wonder if she kind of got  more domesticated than our cats that went  

outside where they could still hunt if they  wanted to or maybe defend themselves against  

something. You know she's totally relaxed  in here. She has she has no enemies other  

than you know my one year old daughter. I was really interested in this question  

because my cat Frida also has questionable  survival instincts. The only thing she’s gifted  

me was a dragonfly, and…. I think it might  have already been dead before she caught it. 

Don’t get offended Frida, you can believe  what you want, I still love you. Anyway,  

it’s good news for the neighbourhood wildlife  if they don’t have to worry about you.  

But to help answer Rachel’s question,  I went to meet a cat who really does  

know how to handle herself outside the home I came across this cat by sheer chance because I  

just was walking along here and sitting gloriously  and window looking at very smug with a cat with  

a collar who got completely content. So  by sheer chance we knocked on the door.

You basically talent spotted the cat I talent spotted the cat. 

That’s Roger Tabor, cat  biologist and behaviourist.  

His pioneering work tracking cats by  attaching GPS and mini cameras to them,  

helped our understanding of cat behaviour  inside and outside the home – how far they roam  

and what they get up to out of our sight. And we’re here to meet one of his research  

subjects…. Queen of the Neighbourhood…. Allow me to introduce Scrumpy. Hello, Scrumpy..  

Scrumpy literally just put her paws right  up on your leg in quite sort of friendly,  

Hello, Roger! She’s a fantastic cat.

Black and white, quite petite.

Very petite.

Oh, wow, looking at me with big golden  eyes. So Roger we’re here because of our  

listener Rachel's question about how well her  cat would survive if it had to fend for itself  

in the in the wild, and Scrumpy’s going to  help us understand cat behaviour. You've put  

cat cam is it yes, a cat sat, that  is a tongue twister, isn't it?  

You've put GPS tracker and a camera on Scrumpy.  And you've followed her on her adventures  

outside of the house, what have you  found out about what she's up to?  

Indoors she's quiet, cute. If you look at her now  she's sitting on her own Jo's lap in a contented  

way. When you get outside, with a normal female  cat, and particularly small female cat as she is,  

you would expect a small range. And the most  startling thing we’ve found, she goes around  

a much bigger range - 10 times bigger than it  should be. She goes up onto that little small  

shed, and then onto the fence behind. And then  the world is her oyster, she uses the tops of  

fences along the bits there, suddenly you’re into  much more varied areas there, going down, finding  

chicken carcasses, pulling them out. And there  is a garden, which has got Rottweilers in it!  

Rottweilers pretty big dogs, Which are known to be short fused.  

She goes over there quite quite happily. There’s  a yew tree which she’ll sit under for hours. And  

gradually you build up how  she leads her life. fade under

MEL: While we were around, Scrumpy wasn’t going  to go on the prowl – obviously she had to keep  

a watchful eye on us and live up to the cat  stereotype of doing exactly the opposite of  

what we wanted her to. So Roger showed us one  of her adventures recorded on her CAT CAM.

Be warned. Oh no. The camera  

angle’s incredible actually, you get a little  glimpse of the nose and her whiskers sneaking in  

there … Right so this looks like woodland Roger. It's a normal garden. There's a lot of trees,  

so she's made this as a great  place to go and sit in and relax in  

but it's not necessarily always just hers. So she’s quite low to the undergrowth.

That's quite dramatic. But  what's actually happening  

is not a full fight. So wait, we just saw  

another cat come into view then If you see how that other cat  

just exploded and it's a big adult male and the  claws are really out. But what you're seeing  

now is that big adult cat saving face, it's  the one that's going away. When actually the  

cat who is in residence who's won is tiny  Scrumpy. She is a fraction of his size.  

She is a female cat, she should not be seeing off  a big male, tough cat like that. But she does.

Scrumpy is clearly quite a different beast from  my meek cat Frida or listener Rachel’s Eva.  

So how come she is quite so feisty, which as Roger  says is very unusual for a small female cat?  

Yeah, this is a huge question. And it's  what makes me so fascinated about Scrumpy  

more than any other cat. There might be  genetically a predisposition to be slightly more  

spiky if you like. But her upbringing was  key, because it was a fairly rough household.  

She was found living in the back of a sofa  with these other litter mates. There were  

some large dogs there as well. So just surviving  at all, she had to be a bit of a tough cookie.  

A cat’s kittenhood, Roger explained, shapes  its survival skills. Scrumpy obviously got  

good at defending herself, and hunting is  another thing that a kitten learns early on.

When you're about four weeks of age mum  starts bringing in initially very dead prey.  

And then, slightly less dead prey. And you will,  by competing with her, you will as a little kitten  

learn from your Mum what to do. The cat is an  animal that has this capability of hunting,  

yes you’ve got those wonderful claws that flick  out. You have to be trained how to use it.  

So early life has a big effect on how  a cat might fend for itself outdoors,  

and from what I’ve seen of Scrumpy, I’d  say she’d have pretty good survival odds.  

As for our listener’s cat Eva? We’ll come back  to Roger later in the show to find out how  

he rates her chances. But I’m curious to find  out more about the wild side of our pet cats.

Cats are well-known for their proud  independence, especially when compared  

to that other pet favourite, dogs. But though  cats do a good imitation of a wild animal,  

how similar are they to their actual wild cousins?

So my name is Jamie Baker. I'm the head keeper  at Battersea Park Children's Zoo. And today I'm  

introducing you to our Scottish Wildcats. So we  have two female Scottish Wildcats here we've got  

Livvi and we've got Skye. This time of  the morning when the sun is shining on  

the back of their enclosure they like to  be up nice and high. So they've got quite  

a good view of everything around them. So Jamie, you've got a metal container  

in your hand with a lot of fluff  poking out the top. What is that?  

So I've got some rabbit, we give them a mixture  of different meat and fish throughout the week,  

similar to what they would eat out in the wild and  rabbit is their favourite. Still have the fur on!

Literally is feeding time at  the zoo. That squirrel is just  

outside the enclosure, it's really taunting cats.  

It would definitely be lunch if it  was inside! They still do occasionally  

catch their own food as well. Haven’t lost their skills.  

And I'm just gonna head inside now. Where are the cats? Are they going to follow him?  

Oh, he’s just thrown the rabbit  onto the platform right next to  

one of the cats but she won't be able to see it. Oh she is.  

Oh! She's grabbed it and she’s run off. She’s going to be nice and secretive  

and take it back to bed. Breakfast in bed, very sensible.

So it's interesting looking at these cats, they’re  sort of striped, tawny coloured, they do look  

very similar to my pet cat, to domestic cats.  How closely related are these are the Scottish  

Wildcats to the cats we have in our homes? To the untrained eye, physically Scottish  

Wildcats look very similar to a domestic moggie.  But it's mostly down to the personality and  

genetics. Our domestic cats that we have at home  are more related to wild descendants from Africa.  

In terms of their behaviour? They're  much more feisty, quite like their name  

suggests they are very wild. And would they be tameable?  

Definitely not. There are lots and lots of  records from many, many years ago of people  

saying that they've been able to tame a Scottish  wildcat, but it's actually never been proven.  

By nature, they do not get on with humans very  well. Whereas our domestic cats have evolved to  

be alongside humans, whether that be taking  food from us or just living around humans.  

Scottish wildcats are very much evolved for life  out in the wilds away from human civilization.

This is a key difference. True  wildcats can never be tamed,  

while the domestic cat will be friendly if it  gets used to us in the first few months of life.

On the other hand, if born in the wild, that same  domestic species can live completely independently  

of humans. But these feral cats are causing  serious problems for the Scottish wildcat…  

At the moment Scottish wildcats are actually  one of the most critically endangered animals  

on the planet. At one point, they were spread  right across Britain, and it's estimated after  

a big study in 2018 that there is only around 30  to 100 Scottish Wildcats left up in the highlands.  

Today, the main reason for them disappearing  is actually hybridization with feral cats. So  

feral cats are basically domestic cats that have  rediscovered their wild side. And they're living  

out in natural habitats hunting for themselves,  and they're breeding with Scottish Wildcats,  

and we're ending up with fewer and fewer pure  Scottish Wildcats left out in the wild.  

The Scottish wildcats here are part of  a UK-wide captive breeding programme,  

that plans to release wildcats from next  year into rewilding enclosures in Scotland,  

where hopefully they’ll be  protected from feral cats.

We’re focusing in this show on whether our  listener’s cat could survive in the wild, but it’s  

important to consider the effect on other animals’  survival, if domestic cats are let loose….

Our domestic cats do quite well out in  the wild looking for their own food.  

But not only are they hybridising, with Scottish  Wildcats, and we're losing an iconic predator,  

but they also hunt small birds  and rodents and amphibians that  

are also quite rare in this country.  And because domestic cats aren't  

a natural part of our food chain, they have  quite a negative impact on our environment.

So the Scottish wildcat is critically  endangered, while the domestic cat can act  

as an invasive species, threatening wildlife  in Scotland as well as many other places.

They really have conquered the  world – so how did this happen?  

Let’s take step back into evolutionary history  

and find out what drew wildcats to hang  out with us humans in the first place.

Will we find evidence of mummified  chewed up shoelaces?!  

The wild ancestors of almost all domestic  cats is the wild cat from Southwest Asia,  

and Northern Africa. It’s a  solitary animal - they hunt rodents,  

they hunt snakes, they hunt scorpions, naturally.

Dr Eva-Maria Geigl is a Research  Director of the CNRS in Paris, studying 

ancient DNA to investigate cats’  evolution and domestication.  

Before the dawn of the Neolithic,  which was when humans started farming,  

each subspecies of wildcats, was very  localised to their own part of the world.  

For example, Europe had the ancestors  of the Scottish wildcats we’ve just met.

But then, something changed. Dr Geigl picks up the  story when these early farmers went on the move.

Around 8000 years ago, when Neolithic farmers  migrated out of what is nowadays, Turkey,  

so Anatolia, in archaeological sites that testify  the presence of the first farmers from Anatolia  

that came into Europe, we found cat remains  that were not the type of the European Wildcat.  

So this indicated that these cats  came with the Neolithic farmers.  

One of the examples that is always cited is  the first archaeological finding on Cyprus,  

an island in the eastern Mediterranean that was  not inhabited by any feline species before the  

Neolithic. And at the beginning of the Neolithic,  archaeologists have found a burial of a child,  

with a cat. Now we cannot say whether this cat  was a wild cat, or tamed cat, but we can say that  

this cat came with these first Neolithic farmers  because a cat will never swim to the island of