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Post by kitsune on Jan 29, 2013 16:35:54 GMT -6
That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You ThinkBy NATALIE ANGIERFor all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of miles, scientists have identified a shocking new truth: cats are far deadlier than anyone realized.
In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat.
The estimated kill rates are two to four times higher than mortality figures previously bandied about, and position the domestic cat as one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats, the report said, than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes. Read More: HERE
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Post by intheway on Jan 29, 2013 16:51:05 GMT -6
No surprise.
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Post by heregoes on Jan 29, 2013 16:53:08 GMT -6
Way back when I lived some where I felt safe letting the cats outside I had a neighbor who was outraged that the cats would kill and eat birds now and then.
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Post by GrumpyOM (RIP) on Jan 29, 2013 18:10:35 GMT -6
Growing up in a hunting family that included a lot of quail hunting, we were taught to kill feral cats in quail country.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2013 11:25:31 GMT -6
It was a shocking new truth in a 1990's BBC documentary. I'll see if I can find a source for it.
To me, this is no revelation as I have shared my home with a number of cats over the years. Several would often bring home "gifts" and leave them for me.
All cats are nothing less than genetically predisposed, very efficient predators.
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Post by kitsune on Jan 31, 2013 20:59:56 GMT -6
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