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 make a comeback...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, given that the colour schemes are not too flattering, 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

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 scrunchies can't do everything it seems.

Via Mashable