> a collar with a little bell. It's nearly guaranteed to ruin their hunting. Unfortunately, that's not true. There was a study by some academics in Britain a f

> a collar with a little bell. It's nearly guaranteed to ruin their hunting. Unfortunately, that's not true. There was a study by some academics in Britain a few years° ago that showed effectively no difference in hunting success rates between belled and un-belled cats. The explanation is that cats are ambush predators, so once they (very quickly) learn how to stalk (they're moving slowly, anyway) without ringing the bell, their quarry doesn't hear the bell until they pounce, when it's (mostly) too late. They were specifically looking at songbirds, as I recall. Maybe success rates for rodents are different - though that'd hardly be a good thing, because we generally want cats to kill mice and rats! --- [On reflection]: Based on where I remember I was living when I read it, this was over a decade ago. (Where does time go?) There may have been updates since.