We’ve now got 7,500 predator control reports, and unlike a lot of other data collectors we encourage our users to file a report every time they check their trap, not just when they caught something. That means we can tell which predator baits are actually working.

Most common lures

Here are the lures people are using:

Proportion of reports filed with different predator lures (non-toxic baits)

Best lures

Now, here are the success rates of the different lures, broken down into the proportion of reports filed that report catches of different species:

Success rates of different lures, i.e. non-toxic baits, for different species.

Conclusions

Here’s a few of the key insights from the data.

1. Chocolate is working a tiny bit better than peanut butter, certainly if you’re after both rats and mice.
2. Rat lures work better than peanut butter or chocolate on rats, but don’t attract many mice. If you want both, then chocolate’s better.
3. The most effective lure for rats and mice is “Other”! Obviously we don’t know what that actually is, but what it suggests is that the traditional rat and mice lures are not the best you can use. Could it be chocolate/hazelnut spread? Let the debate begin.
4. Eggs look fantastic on paper – but they’re obviously expensive and the number of data points we have are very low.
5. For possums, fresh fruit & vegetables work just as well as possum lures. But they also attract rats and hedgehogs, which tend to ignore possum lure (which is usually a design goal for specialist lures, to be fair).

Leave some comments about your favourite lure below!