After years of laboratory, cage and field trials, a new feral cat-specific bait is on the road to be commercialised.

To be known as Curiosity, it has been developed in the main by the Federal Department of Environment and Energy.

The true environmental disaster that is the feral cat population is hard for many to truly comprehend.

They predate on our native wildlife and have already caused more than 20 mammal extinctions, but it does not end there.

Feral cats are directly responsible for putting a further 124 unique Australian mammals at risk of extinction.

Numbats one of the 128 species of native animals at risk of extinction by feral cats. ( Supplied: Robert McLean )

And it is not just the native animal populations at risk.

Feral cats carry a disease known as toxoplasmosis which causes spontaneous abortions in all mammals.

So not only are wallabies and kangaroos exposed by the massive population, believed to be as high as 20 million cats, but farmers livestock are also threatened.

Sheep are particularly susceptible to spontaneous abortion, but not only are lambing rates affected, feral cats carry another disease called sarcosystis which, when passed to the sheep, means the meat is downgraded at the abattoir.

Unbelievably, the carnage inflicted by feral cats in Australia does not end there.

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According to the Threatened Species Commissioner, Gregory Andrews, they pose a clear and present danger to humans.

"We're finding that increasingly, the toxoplasmosis carried by the cats is being linked to abortions and mental health problems for humans," he said.

That is why after a number of years of laboratory, cage and field trials, a new feral cat-specific bait is on the road to be commercialised.

It goes by the clever sobriquet Curiosity and has been developed in the main by the Federal Department of Environment and Energy.

After years of infield-trials the Curiosity cat bait is ready to be commercialised and the Dept of Environment and Energy is looking for a commercialisation partner ( Supplied )

There are other feral cat baits available, such as Eradicat, but it tends to work under very specific conditions.

Gregory Edwards describes Curiosity as a much needed alternative, especial in southern and Central Australia where native animals could be poisoned by more conventional baits.

"It can be distributed out of the back of a LandCruiser or even an aircraft and testing has shown under the right conditions, 80 per cent of the cats that take the bait die from it.

"Curiosity uses a meat based sausage with a small hard plastic pellet inside, which contains the toxin PaPP (para-aminopropiophenon), it's a compound that was originally used as an antidote to cyanide poisoning.

"It works by stopping oxygen bonding with haemoglobin so when the cat eats the sausage, and feral cars don't chew their food so much as gulp is down whole.

"The pellet releases in their stomach, they get groggy, go to sleep, and they die completely humanely.

High hopes for Curiosity cat bait as feral cats cause mass extinctions ( Supplied: Gregory Andrews )

"And the design of the sausage, and the pellet, means that a bandicoot or other carnivorous native animal won't eat it.

"Or if they do nibble at it they spit the pellet out."

Curiosity is currently with the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicine Authority for assessment and registration.

The Department is looking for an company experienced in the field to come on to commercialise the product.

"We're offering a licensing agreement, so we won't be selling it, The Australian government will continue to own the proprietary over it but will be licensing that proprietary to a company.