Human activity is influencing the behavior of Germany's wildcats

A research team led by Dr. Chris Baumann and Dr. Dorothée Drucker from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen has found that the European wildcat is increasingly using agricultural lands as hunting grounds in some parts of Germany, especially in summer when grain crops provide cover. Wildcats normally live in forests; this kind of behavioral change is seen as a response to pressure from human influences such as the fragmentation or destruction of forest areas and more intense agriculture.