A few days after the WTC attacks someone told me that ‘search cats’ were being used at the WTC site to look for survivors. I immediately laughed and said ‘no way’ - as someone who is deeply involved with the cat fancy I surely would have heard of such trained cats before now, and in my opinion cats would not be nearly as efficient as dogs for that sort of thing.
However, I later saw someone mention that they had seen cats being used to explore the rubble by attaching tiny video cameras to them and sending them down holes. Although it would take a tremendous amount of training, I can see where this would be doable, helpful, and a good use of a cat’s natural instincts and superior (to dogs) flexibility.
But I can’t seem to find any information about these alleged ‘search cats.’ It’s hard to believe that this would escape the notice of the worldwide cat fancy, but there hasn’t been a whisper on any of the mailing lists I belong to. Someone asked about this on the cat-clicker-training list, saying they had seen something on MSNBC about it, and the list-owner/trainer also poo-pooed the idea and had never heard of it. No mention of it at all on the working-cat list.
So far internet searching has turned up zilch. Could several widely-separated people have been badly mistaken about what they saw/heard on the news? I know this will probably make me sound like a nut-case, but I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t some sort of secret government project that was given a trial run at the disaster site, and hushed up afterwards.
Does anyone here know anything further about these ‘search cats’? Any links to articles or suggestions for where/how I might have better luck searching? (Yes, DDG, I’ve spent hours with Google!:))
Not a matter of world-shaking importance, but I’m very interested and grateful for any help the Dopers can provide.
My girls have always thought it disciminatory that you see lots of working dogs on TV, but never any working cats. It would be nice to know if there are cats with jobs, if only to serve as role models for the girls, who don’t know that they are supposed to be getting the mice that got into the house this summer.
Problem: Cats are, by nature, squirmy and rebellious little beasties. Lovable, squirmy, rebellious little beasties, but beasties nonetheless. I can’t imagine putting a flea collar on some of my cats, never mind a camera, and expect the cat to do what I ask of her/him.
Then again, if you can train a slobbery, dirty car-chaser to run around the Swiss Alps with a keg of brandy around it’s neck without getting seriously drunk and/or lost, then I guess a cat’s not out of the question…
I think ferrets have been used in the past for this sort of thing, but I have never heard of cats doing it. ::stares at her six cats:: No, I really can’t see cats doing this sort of thing!
In the spirit of LifeOnWry, I asked my moggie, The Amazing Velcro Cat, whether he’d be interested in joining a “search cat” squad.
He ignored me for a while, but eventually deigned to give me an answer when I bribed him with tuna fish and a bit of cheese (don’t tell me cats are lactose-intolerant, Velcro will do anything for a small cube of cheese).
He said certain breeds of cat are certainly more “trainable” than others and will, for example, walk on a leash. He agreed that cats can get places those big ugly dogs can’t.
He then informed me in no uncertain terms that if anyone tried to put a camera on him, they would lose the camera, and a pint or two of blood besides.
Velcro also reminded me of stories we’ve both read about pets of those missing being brought to the site in the hopes that maybe they’d help pinpoint their owners’ locations. Some of those pets may have been cats.
And it’s just the damnedest thing, because as soon as you said that, Coosa, I said, “Hey, I saw that, too, something about cats or ferrets…” Something about “they were so desperate they would try anything.” Now, of course, I can’t find it.
I don’t see anything on Google, either. The national Search and Rescue people don’t have any mention of SAR cats, just dogs.
So I puttered around over at MSNBC for a while, and I found:
Robots–
–and cameras–
You know, there were a number of news releases that later turned out not to be true (“cop survives fall down 82 stories of elevator shaft with only broken leg”), so now I’m wondering if maybe that was one of them. Maybe someone had the idea of using cats and ferrets, and the media person who released it to MSNBC overheard it, but they never actually implemented it, or it didn’t work.
IANA “cat person”, but I can’t visualize cats being trained to do this kind of thing:
The reason why you can train dogs to do SAR work is because it’s a social “game” to them, and their “reward” is when they find someone–“Hey, I win!” the dog says. When the dog gets frustrated because he can’t find anybody, the humans have to stage a “rescue” by having somebody go hide, and let the dog find him, so the game stays fun.
It sounds like it would be feasible, but I have to go with the late great animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams who stated in his autobiography that he had never been able to train a housecat.
Still, I will keep watching the thread to see if anyone comes up with a link just so I’ll have something to “throw up” to my lazy piece o’shit cat, Susie.
Forget about radio safety beacons. From now on, everyone’s going to be required to wear a portable electric can opener. If you’re in danger or distress, just turn it on, and the rescue cats will find you.
And wasn’t Gunther an elephant specialist? A far cry from housecats. The WBBB’s current animal trainer works primarily with tigers; perhaps she’s had more luck?
Here in Indiana, there’s a scrap of history about trained cats. When the area was first being settled, there were a lot of bears about. The farmers wanted to kill them off, despite the fact that Indiana’s bears were the vegetarian kind. Bear-hunting was a way of making a living, and every bear hunter had a group of bear dogs to find and corner the critters. The bears made short work of many of the bear dogs, and, in the shortage, some hunters learned to make do with trained, courageous cats. That was more than a century ago. Bears are now unknown in Indiana, but Muncie Central High School and several others schools honor the valiant bearcats by naming their athletic teams after them.
A physician friend of mine when told of this post, told us that the Japanese are working on doing SAR with cockroaches! Apparently they mount a tiny camera on the roach’s back and control their movements with electrical impulses. Anyone hear of this one?
Have you ever heard of a sled dog? You can take a dog and harness him up with a bunch of other dogs, and that dog will just pull his little heart out for the team.
There’s no such thing as a sled cat. Can you imagine a giant furball of claws and teeth that a dozen tethered cats would be?
Oh, search cats. Well, it may be possible but why? Where can cats go that smaller dogs can’t? If you say a cat is more flexible, how about a smaller dog? Why aren’t there fox hunting cats?
Thanks to everyone for your responses, especially DDG, who did some extra searching on my behalf. I guess this is one question whose answer will remain shrouded in mystery, unless Uncle Cecil decides to take an interest.
I did find this article: CIA Spy Cats. For some reason I don’t find it very inspiring. :rolleyes:
Anyway, I’ve recently started learning about clicker-training for cats (this is a type of training based on behavior modification rather than traditional training techniques) and so was really interested in the possibility that someone had successfully trained cats to explore disaster sites. I keep hearing rumors of cats trained as ‘hearing ear’ assistants for deaf people, as ‘alerters’ in cases asthma attacks, seizures, etc., but I haven’t been able to confirm any of this - most of my info has come from messages on several mailing lists.
There is a cat-clicker training list on yahoo groups with some pretty fascinating stuff in the archives. A couple of professional clicker-trainers are working with cats, and there is a video of one trainer’s successful cat training venture that I hope to obtain soon.
A fellow cat fancier makes so-called ‘escape proof’ harnesses for cats which are basically a close-fitting vest that zips shut along the back. It would be easy to add a small pocket to the chest area for carrying small items, and I guess a small video camera could also be attached there. Cats (and maybe ferrets) could be very useful in situations such as building collapses, where people may be trapped in ‘bubbles’ requiring the shifting of large amounts of rubble before they can be reached by human rescuers. A cat could carry a dose of insulin for a trapped diabetic, written messages, or maybe drag an oxygen line or fiber optic cable behind them while squirming through small spaces.
I’m going to keep an open mind to the possibility - I’ll have to see how my own cat-training program works out!
I’m not sure we’re on the same page here - what in the world do sled dogs have to do with cats? There IS the small matter of size, you know - how many Chihuahuas do you see pulling sleds? Just for that, I’m going to teach my cats to pull a little wagon and send you a video of them doing it!
But to answer your question, cats are MUCH more flexible than even small dogs - although they look similar on the outside, the skeletal and muscular structure on the inside is a tad different. To repeat something most veterinarians have to tell people over and over: Cats are not small dogs that purr.
One bit of info I can provide off the top of my head is that cats do not have ‘collar bones’. Because there is no ‘hard’ connection between their shoulder blades, they have a much greater range of motion, and can drop one shoulder behind the other to squeeze through very narrow spaces.
Oh, and ‘fox-hunting cats’: First show me a pack of fox-hunting Pekingnese.
My point was more that for whatever reason, dogs seem in general to be trainable to a greater extent than cats, so the fact that cats have nothing to do with sled pulling is in fact exactly the point. The size thing also argues towards the, um, non-utilitarian-ness of cats. Dogs are bred in all different sizes for all the different jobs they can do - from Jack Russell terriers to Irish Wolfhounds. Cats, on the other hand, are pretty much all the same size. I suspect it is because there are no jobs for them except to look pretty.
OK, that makes sense. But still, I’ve never heard of cats going to ground to chase prey - will they burrow after a fox or marmot like a terrier would? If they don’t go digging in nature, why would you use them to go digging in a rescue site?
My point is, I’m skeptical of rescue cats, or of the need for them. I have no idea how trainable a ferret is.
Oh man. If I hadn’t just swapped my sig file, I think I’d be going for this one.
As for the OP, I could swear that I saw the idea floated here on the SDMB, sort of as a joke but also with some curiosity about whether it might work. Could you have read about it here, and just misremembered that it was a news source you’d heard it from?
