Remember that episode of Sex & The City when Carrie mocked an out-of-towner's scrunchie and Berger was not at all impressed. Well, we were and still are on Carrie's side.
However, somewhere in the back of your wardrobe you might still have a few scrunchies that have survived the numerous clean outs you've made since the '90s, and they might be about to be, dare we say it, trendy again. Sort of.
A company in the US has found a novel use for the brightly-coloured hairpieces of yesteryear by re-purposing them as collars for cats that will help birds and other wildlife spot the predators sneaking around to try and make a snack out of them.
The cats themselves don't look thrilled (when do they ever?), but birds have an ability to see bright colours clearly, which makes the scrunchies visible and therefore alerts them to the danger.
Birdsbesafe is the company who are making the devices, and they've been pretty active sharing pictures of unimpressed cats wearing their scrunchies
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The Mirror gets the science right, and calls our bird-saving device "jaunty"! Loving it! See more at birdsbesafe .com pic.twitter.com/NIrledCt1N
— Birdsbesafe (@birdsbesafe) February 20, 2015
Emmy, our Birdsbesafe® spokescat, is looking glamorous & obvious to birds (or she would be if she was outdoors). pic.twitter.com/ewrtTiQ6OC
— Birdsbesafe (@birdsbesafe) February 19, 2015
New South Wales, AU. This cat's owner says "he has been unsuccessful in his attempts to hunt birds" since Birdsbesafe pic.twitter.com/V9e1SJsDi6
— Birdsbesafe (@birdsbesafe) January 28, 2015
Whether the felines themselves like it or not, researchers from Murdoch University in Western Australia found that the Birdsbesafe collars were working, and decreased the chances of a cat actually catching it's winged prey by 54%, so it's scientifically proven to work.
However, it doesn't seem to help matters if your cat is more interested in mice or rats, so while they have the ability to make your cat cut a dash, and we'll admit they're pretty handy for pulling hair back, scrunchies can't do everything it seems.
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Via Mashable
We think this is actually a pretty good idea! We don't appreciate presents of birds at our doorstep. What do you think of this idea? Would your cat be daring enough to wear a scrunchie?
