What would you see if you attached a video camera overnight to a housecat?

That’s what Crittercam inventor Greg Marshall, whom I wrote about today as part of his Thursday visit to Minneapolis for National Geographic Live, wondered when he outfitted a cute feline critter with his innovative audiovisual recorder. The stunt was not part of his groundbreaking research on wildlife, which you can see in his narrated video on this website or in films such as March of the Penguins; it was just to test out some tweak in his continually evolving Crittercam. What he found when he examined the footage later was eye-opening, especially to the cat’s owner.

Greg Marshall

“It was fairly horrifying seeing what that cat was doing,” Greg said. This “lovely, little, genteel cat” was going out at night and marauding, killing and eating — head to tail — city rats in the back alleys of Washington DC. “You see this unfolding on video,” he said, “and when the owner saw that, she was totally, completely horrified, promising never to kiss the cat again.” 

Greg said he hasn’t come up with a consumer version of Crittercam, a so-called Petcam, but he has tried out his scientific device many times on his own cat, Snake. (Internet users have come up with less elaborate versions, such as Mr. Lee’s CatCam.)  Until then, we’ll have to make due with his cool work for National Geographic.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.