🌅 Cats Eat a Surprising Number of Species

SOURCE

Lepczyk et al. (2023)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Free-ranging domestic cats around the world consume more than 2,000 different species, including 347 that are of conservation concern. Cats’ pure carnivore diets include approximately 9% of all known birds, 6% of known mammals, and 4% of known reptiles.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Humans have spread domesticated cats around the globe for the past 10,000 years, introducing one of the world’s most successful and widely distributed invasive predators to ecosystems on every continent but Antarctica. The present study demonstrates cats’ status as “extreme generalist predators,” who threaten biodiversity and drive animal population decline by indiscriminately eating almost anything available.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Other research suggests cats have contributed to the extinction of at least 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles throughout history, representing around one-quarter of all known mammal and reptile extinctions. In the U.S. alone, free-ranging cats kill an estimated 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals each year, suggesting cats are the single greatest source of human-induced mortality for both species in the U.S.