Contents lists available at ScienceDirect BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION Biological Conservation vit LSEVIER journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon Where there are girls, there are cats Yuhang Yue

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
BIOLOGICAL
CONSERVATION
Biological Conservation
vit
LSEVIER
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon
Where there are girls, there are cats
Yuhang Yue Wan, Yigui Zhang, Zhaomei Gong,
School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, 210023 Nanjing, China
Lab of Animal Behavior and Conservation, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, 210023 Nanjing, China
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Keywords:
The growing population of outdoor free-ranging cats poses an increasingly serious threat to biodiversity.
Free-ranging cat
Feral cat
Identifying the strategies that outdoor free-ranging cats apply to live with humans is an interesting research
topic. In this study, we provided robust estimates of free-ranging cat density in 30 universities in Nanjing,
Human sex ratio
Socialization test
Jiangsu Province, China. We found that the population density of free-ranging cats is linearly related to the
proportion of female students in the university. An online questionnaire confirmed that human females were
more concerned about the living conditions of free-ranging cats than human males in China. contrast, a
socialization test on 27 free-ranging cats suggests that the cats may have the ability to distinguish human sex and
adopt a sociable skill to human females. ‘This study leaves an interesting coevolution story between humans and
cats and suggests that human sex may be an important factor to consider in cat population managements and
wildlife conservation.