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Comment by Roark66 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not quite convinced that "animals don't get lost". How many lost cats never return for every one that does? Did anyone ever make a real study?

Also there are other questionable bits in the article for example "We now have geolocation devices light enough to be carried by monarch butterflies". Where are those devices described? For years I've been looking for a reliable GPS tracking for cats that don't require the use of a collar (which is a huge risk to a cat in dense vegetation). There is nothing on the market (that I know of) that would be available as a small wirelessly charged implant, or even better something tiny that could be attached to the fur like goosegrass pods.

I bet other outdoor cat owners would pay good money for devices like that, but other than a periodic kickstarter scam there is nothing.

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I have had probably more than a hundred cats throughout my childhood more than 13(kittens) at one given point. All my cats were outside/indoor cats free to go and come and I am convinced that the cats that would go out and not come back were either killed by dogs in the surrounding neighborhoods or simply didn't not want to come back. The cats that would not usually return were the older ones. If a younger cat did not return then I assumed it was dead.

We had given a few cats aways and they would sometimes come back home after a week or so. We lived on a mountain and my Aunt miles away in the valley and a cat we gave her came right back home. We gave away another few that did the same thing this time in even further locations.

Cats have personalities.

I'm sure you know this, but maybe have not considered it in this context.

There have been humans in my life I did not like, or who drove me bonkers. Perfectly good people, but just a personality conflict. Who's to say, that it isn't the same for some cats? Just a personality conflict, and so they seek life elsewhere.

And only a 100 years ago, most cats were farms cats, as most people lived in rural areas. Many cats were barn cats, familiar with humans, but mostly wild, living off of mice and other vermin.

Those genes don't vanish in 100 years. Maybe some of those older cats just preferred independence?

Male cats are usually the ones to go out and then come back in a few days, next time few weeks, then months... and then they disappear for good. I've never had a female cat go away like that.

Does that apply to neutered males?

My neutered male cat sometimes disappeares but with exception of that one time I had to fetch him from the top of a 14m tall pine tree he always returns. My other cat (also a neutered male) never goes away for more than half a day.

Probably not, that would be my guess.

> The cats that would not usually return were the older ones.

Cats that are about to die will often go off somewhere by themselves.

I'm not convinced either, because there are cases of animals found after long periods of starvation when the animal probably knows it can find food at home. But it is possible that those animals are driven to hide in fear instead of braving a return to their home. Also the ones that never return may have just died instead of being truly lost. There lots of dangers out there. And there's also cases of theft.

As far as I'm aware you're right about the geolocation devices. This is a great podcast about a guy working on Project ICARUS, where they're working on tracking thousands and thousands of animals with small geolocation devices so we have much better data to work from - https://www.bigbiology.org/season-2#episode43. From what I recall the idea of tracking butterflies was something they were working on but hadn't cracked yet. I think it was towards the end of the podcast, but I'd recommend the whole thing.

Monarch butterflies are tracked by tags, rather like ringing birds

Source https://monarchjointventure.org/faq/track-the-migration

Monarch butterflies are tracked by people, who use the unique identifiers on the passive tags to identify butterflies and record where they were spotted/captured. The tags themselves are no more than a sticker designed to stick to butterflies without impeding or harming them - they started making them in 1992, afterall.

GP is talking about active tags that get their coordinates by using GPS satellites and (I assume) phone home in some way.

I heard that most cats are actually found before they are lost, i.e. well-meaning people bringing them to an animal shelter while the cat would have been perfectly fine on their own. I can not say how they came to that conclusion (a guess: maybe by owners saying that it was perfectly normal for the cat to roam the same distances from home as when they were caught and brought to the shelter?)

I can definitely see how that could happen in many places,but very unlikely where I'm at. We don't even have a cat shelter in my area(dogs only - no idea why). Also, and that really pisses me off, people here are generally of the opinion every cat will happily survive on their own in the countryside which leads to people from cities abandoning unwanted cats (and dogs) here(this is how I got my first cat) . I even had a ridiculous situation of someone dropping two dogs in front of my property at 4am. The dogs had nowhere to go so they hanged around my place for two days (it was a weekend so I couldn't ring animal control). On the third day the same person came and picked the dogs back... I have no idea what such people think.

I understand. Abandoning pets is terrible but a rather visible thing. For each abandoned animal there must be lots of pets living good lives with people who actually care if this is a relief.

From what I read lots of people got pets during the pandemic to have company at home. I worry a bit what will happen to them once people can resume their regular lifestyles.

Presumably it is https://monarch.engin.umich.edu/ which isn't really a geolocation device, it's a environmental logger that can (apparently) be used to infer a track.

I have a weird feeling when cats go missing they want a new home, or want to roam?

This is actually how we acquired our first cat. A cat just turned up at our door one day and basically moved in - we didn't feed her at first, but she slept and played with us (3 kids)

Eventually my parents managed to track down the actual owner, turns out the cat and her sister didn't get along too well in the same house, she only went there to eat.

The owner was more than happy for us to properly adobt her.

No clue why she chose us, but cats are territorial animals so it makes sense that they can just not like tho they're living with.

Well, I've worked on one such geolocation device about the size of a grain of rice, and that was 30 years ago. It was a tracking device started by a former Israeli military intelligence officer after his family was scattered in a terrorist attack and it was days before everyone could be accounted. This tracking device was the size of a pack of cigarettes' when in development, and by the time I left the company (late 1990) the company was being sold to the Israeli government and the device was the size of a grain of rice. It provided 3D location in an area via 3-way triangulation of telecommunication tower signals.

We talkin’ basmati or sushi rice? And how was it powered?

It was basically a miniaturized pager, powered by a tiny military watch type battery. The device was an ASIC, application specific integrated circuit, and it sat on the battery like a little bead.

Small enough to be snuck into a vaccine dose and secretly injected!

Every year thousans of birds, animals migrate thousand of kilometers and they do not lose their way. This is a proof they knows how to find their ways. It is understood that navigation has been taught and equipped for them.

Every year thousands of humans migrate thousands of kilometers without getting lost. That doesn’t mean humans can’t get lost.

There is a lot of survivorship bias in your assumption. How many animals fail to complete those migrations?

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