Birds alighting on driveways and baby bunnies munching on lawn grass should keep something in mind: Beware the house cat.
A new study shows that hunting by house cats can have big effects on local animal populations because they kill more prey, in a given area, than similar-sized wild predators. This effect is mostly concentrated relatively close to a pet cat’s home, since most of their movement was a 100-meter radius of their homes, usually encompassing a few of their neighborhood’s yards on either side.
Researchers from NC State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences collaborated with scientists and citizen scientists from six countries to collect GPS cat-tracking data and prey-capture reports from 925 pet cats, with most coming from the U.S., U.K, Australia and New Zealand.
“Since they are fed cat food, pets kill fewer prey per day than wild predators, but their home ranges were so small that this effect on local prey ends up getting really concentrated,” said Roland Kays, the paper’s lead author. “Add to this the unnaturally high density of pet cats in some areas, and the risk to bird and small mammal population gets even worse.
“We found that house cats have a two- to 10-time larger impact on wildlife than wild predators – a striking effect,” he said.
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Posted On: 12/03/2020