FOXSYLVANIA

– – It’s been said that were videos about cats and pornography eliminated from the internet, there would be little left!  While appealing and loved by many, cats can at times also show a darker side.  Here we see the lap cat of Bond arch-villain Blofeld.  Cats have demonstrated abilities to be efficient predators, as has been recently noted by research conducted by the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.  

The study found that previous wildlife mortality estimates owing to feline predation were way too low.  Cats, primarily un-owned, feral ones, are felt to be responsible for the deaths of 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds, and 6.9 to 20.7 billion mammals annually.  If 2.3 billion birds are killed by cats, this would mean that 1 in 10 birds are taken by cats every year. 

In New Zealand, cats are considered an invasive species, and have prompted environmentalist/economist Gareth Morgan to push for much tighter controls on the island nation’s cat population expressed through a “Cats to Go” campaign.  Rather than declaring open season on cats, however, the program advocates neutering cats, keeping them indoors, and not getting any new ones. 

The American study does not recommend any drastic schemes to cut down on U.S. wildlife deaths, but rather calls for “conservation and policy intervention” in order to reduce environmental impact.  It should be pointed out that humans are responsible for most modern animal extinctions, whether through hunting, habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species, or other environmental disruptions…

This entry was posted on January 31, 2013 at 2:29 am and is filed under animal behavior, animal occurrences, animals, conservation, environmental, furry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: wildlife mortality by cats