January 29, 2013
Feral Cats Kill Billions of Small Critters Each Year
A feral cat, just trying to get by. Photo: Topsynette
There are so many ways for a little bird or squirrel to die these days–they can be squished by cars, splattered into buildings, run over by bulldozers, poisoned or even shot. But if you have ever had to clean up a mangled “present” left on your doorstep by a kitty, you’ll know that little creatures can also be killed by pets.
Cats in particular have earned a nasty reputation for themselves as blood thirsty killers of wildlife. They have been named among the top 100 worst invasive species (PDF) in the world. Cats have also earned credit for countless island extinctions. Arriving onto the virgin specks of land alongside sailors, the naive native fauna didn’t stand a chance against these clever, efficient killers. All said, cats claim 14 percent of modern bird, amphibian and mammal island extinctions. But what about the mainland?
A recent study aimed to find out just that. Now the stats are in, and it’s much worse than we thought. But before bird lovers rush to declaw pets, the study’s scientists also found that feral cats and strays–not house cats–are responsible for the majority of the killings.
To arrive at the new findings, researchers from the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Center assembled a systematic review of every U.S.-based cat predation study known in the scientific literature (excluding Hawaii and Alaska). Based on figures the authors verified as scientifically rigorous, they statistically quantified the total bird and small mammal mortality estimate caused by cats, further breaking the categories down into domestic versus unowned cats, that latter of which the authors define as barnyard kitties, strays that receive food from kind humans and cats that are completely wild.
Their results paint a grim picture for wildlife. In a paper published today in Nature Communications, they write that between 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds lose their lives to cats each year in the United States. Around 33 percent of the birds killed are non-native species (read: unwelcome). Even more startlingly, between 6.9 to 20.7 billion small mammals succumb to the predators. In urban areas, most of the mammals were pesky rats and mice, though rabbit, squirrel, shrew and vole carcasses turned up in rural and suburban locations. Just under 70 percent of those deaths, the authors calculate, occur at the paws of unowned cats, a number about three times the amount domesticated kitties slay.
Cats may also be impacting reptile and amphibian populations, although calculating those figures remains difficult due to a lack of studies. Based upon data taken from Europe, Australia and New Zealand and extrapolated to fit the United States, the authors think that between 258 to 822 million reptiles and 95 to 299 million amphibians may die by cat each year nationwide, although additional research would be needed to verify those extrapolations.
These estimates, especially for birds, far exceed any previous figures for cat killings, they write, and also exceed all other direct sources of anthropogenic bird deaths, such as cars, buildings and communication towers.
The authors conclude:
The magnitude of wildlife mortality caused by cats that we report here far exceeds all prior estimates. Available evidence suggests that mortality from cat predation is likely to be substantial in all parts of the world where free-ranging cats occur.
Our estimates should alert policy makers and the general public about the large magnitude of wildlife mortality caused by free-ranging cats.
Although our results suggest that owned cats have relatively less impact than un-owned cats, owned cats still cause substantial wildlife mortality; simple solutions to reduce mortality caused by pets, such as limiting or preventing outdoor access, should be pursued.
The authors write that trap-neuter/spay-return programs–or those in which feral cats are caught, “fixed,” and released back into the wild unharmed–are undertaken throughout North American and are carried out largely without consideration towards to native animals and without widespread public knowledge. While cat lovers claim that these methods reduce wildlife mortality by humanely limiting the growth of feral colonies, the authors point out that the scientific literature does not support this assumption. Therefore, such colonies should be a “wildlife management priority,” they write. They don’t come out and say it but the implication is that feral cat colonies should be exterminated.
But feral cats, some animal rights advocates argue, are simply trying to eke out a living in a tough, unloving world. As the Humane Society explains, simply removing the cats may not be the most efficient means of solving the problem because cats that are inevitably left behind repopulate the colony, surrounding colonies may move in to replace the old and “the ongoing abandonment of unaltered pet cats…can also repopulate a vacated territory.” Feral cats, after all, are the “offspring of lost or abandoned pet cats or other feral cats who are not spayed or neutered.” Targeting irresponsible humans may provide a different solution, although spay/neuter laws are controversial.
In Washington D.C. alone, for example, there are more than 300 known feral cat colonies. Wildlife are victims of this problem, but feral cats are too as conditions for survival are tough. And as with so many other environmental banes, the root of the problem neatly traces back to a single source: humans. As the authors write in their paper, feral cats are the single greatest source of anthropogenic (human-driven) mortality for U.S. birds and mammals.
Incidentally, the Humane Society will host World Spay Day on February 26. Find an event for your furry friend to attend, or even host a spaying party yourself.
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What a load of malarky. So let’s see – based on “study of studies” from which the authors then “estimate” the ‘stats’ of how many small mamals were killed by cats (and how do they prove those estimated ‘stats’?), these “experts” are now advocating what? Mass killing of cats? Spare me. This is so wrong on every possible level. The organization doing this and your own part in this should be investigated and repudeated for the gross falsehoods which are propagating.
This article completely ignores the BENEFITS of Cats killing billions of small mammals annually. Religious zealots in the middle ages once decided to kill all the cats in Egypt. This led to a boom in rat populations that led to the Black Plague! Cats killing small mammals, especially mice and rats, is ESSENTIAL to human city life and civilized farming lifestyle. They are controlling the populations of small wildlife that spread diseases! I can understand that we ought to reduce feral cat populations in wildlife sanctuaries, but within city limits, eradicating feral cat populations, instead of just controlling their populations, could be a deadly mistake!
I have just under two acres in a small rural town in Louisiana. My property backs up to a city creek. Large water oaks, sweet gum, and other flora and fauna abound. Until the neighbors let their cats run and breed at will a large number of insects, birds, minnows, frogs, toads, lizards, squirrels, also abounded. Until recently as many 7 or 8 half- starved cats would ravage anything and everything they could reach, and capture. I really got the chills as a cat would drag a screaming squirrel off into the woods next door. I don’t why, but gradually all but one of the cats disappeared. Unfortunately all that was killed, played with or eaten has not been replaced with a like species. I don’t know of any legal action to eliminate this threat, and will leave this to people who have a passion for this kind of thing. Thank you for bringing to our attention that which I have suspected for many years.
My neighbor has three “free range cats” that spend most of their time outdoors in spring and summer attacking anything that moves. We always start out in the spring with an adorable chipmunk family that is decimated within weeks by the cats. It’s so bad that I had to chase them out of my yard numerous time for stalking butterflys under the butterfly bushes…seriously I found dozens of butterfly’s unable to fly with broken or missing wings. I hate cats and wish cat owners realized how destructive thier pets are. Next year I get out the bee bee gun…
Naturally anything that does not jive with your world view is going to be malarkey Roger. I would also like to see some proof that getting rid of cats led to the black plague Becca, it sounds interesting I’d be curious to see how it contributed.
More junk science.
“And as with so many other environmental banes, the root of the problem neatly traces back to a single source: humans.”
Actually, as with so many other trumped-up environmental issues, the root of the problem traces back to two sources: environmentalists who are incapable of weighing the relative impacts of wildlife and human priorities on an objective basis, and those who take these environmentalists seriously.
This piece reads as if it were a parody of modern-day environmentalism written for satirical news outlet The Onion. Just think of all the voles we’d save and the self-satisfied “greedy” humans we’d upset if we exterminated all cats. That would show them who’s in charge.
Will be canceling my subscription tomorrow
Here’s how these ignorant, self-serving, and uneducated TNR-advocates are destroying all life on the planet.
The TNR CON-GAME
FACT: Trap & Kill failed because cats cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control.
FACT: Trap, Neuter, & Release (TNR) is an even bigger abject failure because these man-made ecological disasters cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control, and they also continue the cruelly annihilate all native wildlife (from the smallest of prey up to the top predators that are starved to death), and the cats continue to spread many deadly diseases that they carry today — FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO VACCINES AGAINST THEM. Many of which are even listed as bioterrorism agents. (Such as Tularemia and The Plague — Yes, people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. No fleas nor rats even required. The cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.)
FACT: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY _NOTHING_ HUMANE ABOUT TNR. Nearly every last TNR’ed cat dies an inhumane death by road-kill, from cat and animal attacks, environmental poisons, starvation, dehydration, freezing to death, infections, parasites, etc. And if very very lucky humanely shot to death or re-trapped and drowned (the two most common methods employed on all farms and ranches to protect their gestating livestock’s offspring and valuable native wildlife dying from cats’ Toxoplasmosis parasites). This doesn’t begin to count the thousands of defenseless native animals that cats skin alive and disembowel alive for their daily and hourly play-toys. The only difference in destroying cats immediately and humanely instead of trapping, sterilizing, then releasing them to an inhumane death; is that money isn’t going into an HSUS or SPCA board-member’s pocket, veterinarian’s pocket, cat-food company CEO’s pocket, or a drug-company CEO’s pocket. And that’s the ONLY difference!
FACT: Cats are a man-made (through selective breeding) invasive species. And as such, are no less of a man-made environmental disaster than any other caused by man. Cats are even worse than an oil-spill of continent-sized proportions. They not only kill off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastlines from run-off carrying cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites, they destroy the complete food-chain in every ecosystem where cats are found. From smallest of prey gutted and skinned alive for cats’ tortured play-toys, up to the top predators that are starved to death from cats destroying their ONLY food sources. (Precisely what cats caused on my own land not long ago.)
FACT: Hunted To Extinction (or in this case, extirpation of all outdoor cats) is the ONLY method that is faster than a species like cats can exponentially out-breed and out-adapt to. Especially a man-made invasive species like these cats that can breed 2-4X’s faster than any naturally occurring cat-species.
FACT: In _TWELVE_YEARS_ Alley Cat ALL-LIES of NYC have only reduced feral cats in their own city by 0.08% to 0.024% (as the months go on that percentage becomes more insignificant), allowing more than 99.92% to 99.976% to exponentially breed out of control. Here’s how Alley-Cat-ALL-LIES’ deceptive math works: If you TNR 4 cats and 3 get flattened by cars this translates to 75% fewer feral-cats everywhere. Alley Cat ALL-LIES can’t even reduce cats in their own city, yet they promote it as a worldwide solution. Then even bigger fools fall for it and promote it.
FACT: When researching over 100 of the most “successful” TNR programs worldwide, JUST ONE trapped more than 0.4%. Oregon’s 50,000 TNR’ed cats (the highest rate I found) is 4.9% of all ferals in their state. Yet, by applying population growth calculus on the unsterilized 95.1% they will have trapped only 0.35% of all cats in their state sometime this year. Less than 0.4% is a far cry from the required 80%-90% to be the least bit effective.
FACT: Their mythical “vacuum effect” is a 100% LIE. A study done by the Texas A&M University proved that any perceived “vacuum” is just the simple case that CATS ATTRACT CATS. Get rid of them all and there’s no cats there to attract more. I proved this myself by shooting and burying hundreds of them on my own land. ZERO cats replaced them FOR 3 YEARS NOW. If you want more cats, keep even one of them around, more will find you. That university study also found that sterilized cats very poorly defend any territory. Non-sterilized cats, being more aggressive, take over the sterilized cats’ resources (shelter & food if any). If there is any kind of “vacuum effect” at all, it is that sterilizing cats cause non-sterilized cats to restore the reproductive void.
FACT: During all this investigation I have discovered something that is unfaltering without fail. Something that you can bet your very life on and win every last time. That being — IF A TNR CAT-HOARDER IS TALKING THEN THEY ARE LYING. 100% guaranteed!
There is a very long thread regarding this article that I just read. I’m trying to post to that thread but unable to for some reason. The comments that were made by multiple people were very sickening.
This is to the people with no regard for living creatures….
… I’m more concerned about the psychopathic and sociopathic trolls who have posted on this topic. you clearly get off on harming and killing living creatures because you can. You are a bigger threat to our world than any wild, feral, or stray animal.
Be cautious about using any cats taken from outdoors for adoption or you could be held criminally responsible. There’s no way to know a wild-harvested cats’ vaccination history, if any, nor their exposure to all the deadly diseases cats carry. If a cat has contracted rabies then a vaccination later will do no good. It’s already too late. There’s no reliable known test for rabies while keeping the animal alive. They need to be destroyed after they are trapped. It’s the only sane and sensible solution. This is why all wild-harvested animals of any type intended for the pet-industry must, BY LAW, undergo an extended quarantine of a MINIMUM of 6 months before transfer or sale of those animals to prevent just these things. Cats are no different than any other animal when wild-harvested. You’re risking this following story happening in every shelter across the land.
Google for: rabid cat adopted wake county
Another example (of thousands), Google for: rabid kitten jamestown exposure
Adopting or approaching any unknown cat that’s been outdoors is just playing Russian Roulette.
The net is flooded with similar examples every week. THOUSANDS of people must endure, pay for (out of their own pocket) the painful and expensive (more than $1000) rabies shots if they get scratched or bitten by any stray or feral cat, especially if that cat cannot be trapped again to destroy it and test it for rabies. Stray-cat feeders are guaranteeing this, by training and teaching these cats to approach humans for food. These cats then lashing out by biting or scratching at any hands that try to touch or pet them.
Even vaccinating your cat against rabies won’t prevent it from finding the nearest rabid bat dying on the ground to rip it to shreds for its daily cat’s play-toy. Then bringing back a mouthful or claws full of fresh rabies virus to you, your family, neighbors, other pets, or other animals. ANY cat allowed outdoors can transmit rabies to others, vaccinated or not.
These are just the diseases they’ve been spreading to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Campylobacter Infection, Cat Scratch Disease, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Giardia, Plague, Rabies, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasma. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Sarcosporidiosis, Flea-borne Typhus, Tularemia, and Rat-Bite Fever can now also be added to that list.
A FEW examples (of thousands):
Cat-Transmitted PLAGUE:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8059908
http://www.pagosasun.com/archives/2011/07July/072811/webplague.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/oregon-man-suffering-plague-critical-condition-article-1.1094782
http://www.daily-times.com/ci_20849462/health-department-said-taos-cat-has-plague
Totally disproving that oft-spewed myth that cats in Europe could have prevented the plague. No rats nor fleas even required. Cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.
Tularemia:
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/health/miscellaneous/2011-09-14/cats-savoy-test-positive-rabbit-fever.html
http://www.westyellowstonenews.com/news/article_02fceec6-f695-11e0-b752-001cc4c002e0.html
Flea-borne Typhus:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/county-317133-animals-cases.html
Hookworm — ruined Miami Businesses:
articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-11-24/news/fl-miami-beach-hookworms-20101123_1_hookworm-infections-feral-miami-beach
Cats’ most insidious disease of all, their Toxoplasma gondii parasite they spread through their excrement into all other animals. This is how humans get it in their dinner-meats, cats roaming around stockyards and farms. This is why cats are routinely destroyed around gestating livestock or important wildlife by shooting or drowning them. So those animals won’t suffer from the same things that can happen to the unborn fetus of any pregnant woman. (Miscarriages, still-births, hydrocephaly, and microcephaly.) It can make you blind or even kill you at any time during your life once you’ve been infected. It becomes a permanent lifetime parasite in your mind, killing you when your immune system becomes compromised by disease or chemo and immunosuppressive therapies. It can last over a year in any soils or waters and not even washing your hands or garden vegetables in bleach will destroy the oocysts. Contrary to cat-lovers’ self-deceptive myths, a cat can become reinfected many times during its life and spread millions of oocysts each time. It’s now linked to the cause of autism, schizophrenia, and brain cancers. This parasite is also killing off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastlines from cats’ T. gondii oocysts in run-off from the land, the oocysts surviving even in saltwater. Its strange life cycle is meant to infect rodents. Any rodents infected with it lose their fear of cats and are attracted to cat urine.
scitizen.com/neuroscience/parasite-hijacks-the-mind-of-its-host_a-23-509.html
Cats attract rodents to your home with their whole slew of diseases. If you want rodents in your home keep cats outside of it to attract diseased rodents to your area. I experienced this phenomenon (as have many others), and all rodent problems disappeared after I shot and buried every last cat on my land.
The time has come to destroy them all whenever spotted away from supervised confinement. There’s no other solution. We have nobody but cat-lovers to thank for this health and ecological disaster. Stray-cats, the very source of all feral-cats, need to be euthanized too or you’ll never be rid of the feral-cat problem.
I think the worst part of all, anyone associated with TNR aren’t adhering to the mandatory REQUIRED BY LAW SIX-MONTH QUARANTINE for any animal when harvested from the wild and intended for any sector of the pet-trade. This is why rabid kittens are now being adopted direct from shelters without the REQUIRED BY LAW 6-MONTH QUARANTINE (Like this one for example, Google for: rabid kitten adopted wake county) The 10-14 day holding period for bite & scratch cases is ONLY meant to see if they were infectious at the time of the incident, but DOES NOT IN ANY WAY prove that that cat does not have rabies. The incubation period for rabies can be (on average) from 21 to 240 days. And in some cases as much as 11 months. One rare case being 6 years. This is why when you take your pet to another country they MUST quarantine your pet for a MINIMUM of 6 months to be relatively sure (not 100% certain) that you are not bringing rabies into their country. Giving a rabies shot to an animal that already has rabies and has not been quarantined for AT LEAST 6 MONTHS FIRST does NOTHING to ensure that that animal does not have rabies!
But these TNR advocates, and the veterinarians and shelters and local government “officials” that support them? EACH AND EVERY ONE IS IN *DIRECT* *VIOLATION* OF WELL-ESTABLISHED *NATIONAL* & *INTERNATIONAL* *LAW*. They ALL need to be sued — fast, hard and so deep that they never recover from it.
Now add on top of that that anyone who feeds these cats is training them to approach humans for food (contrary to them always claiming feral cats run from humans). What happens to the child or foolish adult that reaches down to pet or try to pick up that now seemingly friendly “cute kitty”? The wild animal lashes out and bites or scratches the hand that has no food for them.
Google for: feral cat attack rabies
Don’t be surprised at the number of search-hits you get or the horrendous stories that go with them. The number of suspected rabies cases and the then required mandatory rabies shots for each individual costing them well over $1000 out of their own pockets, has been growing as exponentially fast as cats breed. Ask a cat-feeder to pay for your shots and lost work-time and suffering? Neither they, nor shelters, nor the local government who supports TNR carry ONE PENNY of liability insurance for the deadly dangers they are bringing to their communities by allowing them to feed and TNR stray cats. Two recent reports even document rabid cats entering a home through their pet-door and one even came through their ceiling searching for human-supplied foods — one attack so bad it required hospitalization for the family.
Let’s make 2013 the year where ALL aspects of TNR are ILLEGAL nationwide. It’s the only solution.
Congratulations on going viral, Smithsonian! Your ‘systematic statistical review verified by its own authors’ made me extremely happy!
I am amazed to learn from your press releases that if pet cats are decimating a quarter of the bird population, we at least still have twenty billion birds in the United States alone. (This sounds way higher than the numbers from the Audubon Society, but of course it’s not like they hand-counted each one.)
I was so relieved to learn that deforestation, hunting, urbanization, noise, pollution, electricity, skyscrapers, industrial development, pesticides, commercial agriculture, and invasive non-native bird populations have had very little effect on songbirds. It will be much easier to euthanize the cats than give up my car!
Once we shoot and poison all the packs of feral cats running loose in the D.C. subway, it will be lovely to return to the predatorless Eden that the United States used to be. (I had been under the mistaken impression that America was originally nothing like New Zealand or Australia.) I guess that having billions and billions of birds circling overhead for hours (like they did before Fluffy wiped them out in 1800) will result in a lot of guano, but someone has to shovel it.
-A Devoted Subscriber.
(P.S., I just adore all the cute stuffed animal statues in your museum, especially the fake birds. Who is “T.R.”? He seems to have made a lot of them… anyway, they are very lifelike!)
It is pretty clear how they came up with these statistically verified results. And of course the Smithsonian is known for its malarkey…
It’s very clear in the message that feral cats are the primary issue and goes to mankind not taking care of its pet population, no surprise there. It’s a similar theme here in Texas with feral hogs that destroy land/crops at an alarming rate. Feral cats are a problem, not a tough issue to wrap your head around.
Warren, I’m sorry that I don’t have a specific reference for you, but I have heard this from a number of sources over the years. Statistics speak for themselves also: 6.9 to 20.7 small mammals killed each year by cats. Thats a lot of rodents even if they don’t make up the full number, significantly more rodents than birds are killed by cats. Rodents STILL carry the plague, there have been recent stories of people contracting the plague from rodents. I agree, we should try and control cat populations in wildlife areas. But to eradicate all cats in populated areas would clearly be an environmental and a public health catastrophe.
As a wildlife biologist, I know the impact feral and stray cats have on small mammal populations. I would like to see more information on how this study was conducted. However, cats, as well as humans, are a serious problem for the natural landscape. Are all you people saying that it’s ok for a cat to kill an endangered species of amphibian, mammal, or bird? If you care about the wildlife we have left on this planet (which is disappearing at an alarming rate), you would get your cats spayed or neutered and declawed. The thought that cats are all “high and mighty” because they kill all of the “pests” is ridiculous. Without the “pests,” the populations of invertebrates would increase; it’s a part of the food chain that cats DO NOT belong in. The black plague occurred due to the lack of knowledge about hygiene. To say Egyptians killed all the cats, which increased rat populations and caused the black plague is ludacris. Again, as a wildlife biologist, I feel it is important for scientists to inform the public of the level of impact cats have on wildlife populations.
I have managed a colony in a downtown business strip for 11 years. There are now only a handful of cats. However, over those 11 years so many big box stores have gone in, that the feeding station has been shifted twice as smaller buildings are knocked down and bigger ones are built. I used to see waterfowl on the creek that is now a treeless rip-rapped drainage ditch. Bushes are gone entirely, and the remaining woods is barren, eaten down by the deer that have nothing left to eat. The only birds I see now are starlings and crows. The major problem is that a story of a successful feral cat colony whose numbers have plummeted does not get the frantic clicks, shares (and therefore media investment) of a story like this. Even the cat lovers will share this out of outrage, not just happy cat haters congratulating themselves.
Well the study is a load of BS, all estimations and nothing concrete. It is not like all the cat owners filled an application filling in how many rodents / birds it has killed the past year.
As a cat owner i can say that we never had a domesticated cat that killed a lot.
They forget that none of the domesticated cats do not kill the minimum required amount of animals to survive!
This is a cover up to blame cats and not pesticdes / manipulation the magnetic field, radio frequencies etc that is affecting the birds!
Birds are dropping out of the sky in the thousands no cat responsible for that.
Man I do not want to know how many rodents would there if we wouldn’t have the cat.
Are they forgetting the bubonic plague and the relations with cats..?
Wait, so you are saying that feeding a colony of cats for 11 years is a success? 11 years of these cats killing chipmunks and their young. 11 years of fledgling birds being killed every spring. A success! For the cats maybe, and for your own ego….believing you are doing good. If you had trapped the cats and taken them to a shelter, even IF they were euthanized so many more lives would have been saved. Birds that would have successfully fledged young. Voles that would have continued to live and provide important nutrient cycling. Or is it only CAT lives that are important?
I say we get rid of the irresponsible humans who don’t have the balls to take their cat pet to the humane society, but instead leave them out to fend for themselves when they become inconvenient to take care of. Problem solved.
Industrialization and pollution is more to blame for wildlife’s decreased numbers. For example, lack of bees – which I’m sure cats do not kill in any great numbers. But no one seems to want to pursue this avenue. Big Business & Big Money is involved. So instead, blame the cats. And if one really believed this was true, then why arent there mandatory spay-neuter laws? Why is no one addressing the problem of nocost/low cost spay-neuter clinics & requiring vets to donate a certain number per week as part of their license to practice? Or better yet, get pass the vet lobby and have an injection form of sterilization at no cost. So, people throw out their unaltered pets and instead of prosecuting them, we persecute the cats? Now that makes sense???
And one thing I do know from all my courses in statistics is that you can prove any point of view you wish by eliminating and modifying the numbers to prove your point.
How much do backyard bird feeders contribute to cats killing birds in cities? Pretty self evident. If you concentrate prey in an area where predators live, you will have predation?
So if feeding wildlife is illegal, why then are people feeding birds? an urban environment is not normal bird habitat, however it becomes habitat when people are feeding birds.
Nowhere in the article is there a discussion of cat predation in normal bird habitat.
Woodsman, your facts are as warped as your world view… to suggest killing ALL cats on sight… you weave in JUST enough truth and use big words to make people think that you know what you are talking about, and then you beat the drum with scare tactics like the threat of toxoplasmosis.
Sure, it’s easy to say shoot the cats, while we are at it, why not shoot the skunks, shoot the squirrels, shoot the racoons, and shoot the prairie dogs (the little buggers do carry bubonic plague after all)
Scare tactics aside, here is a little FACT for everyone out there, since 1960, there have been a total of 2 cases in the United States where a human contracted rabies from a cat – TWO!
First of all, who counted? Much of the material is cobbled together from other sources that were prejudiced or egregiously in error to begin with. The issuance of this report is irresponsible and the Smithsonian and Fish & Wildlife (who we already know have no shame and little contact with reality) should be humiliated to be associated with it in any way.
There can be no doubt that cats hunt ~ they are predators. Humans, on the other hand, pen up animals in hellish conditions and slaughter them wholesale instead. Do we really consider this better? I certainly hope that anyone who supports this report is VEGAN. I am, tho I do not support this diatribe of warped and inflated hooey.
We have succeeded in eliminating almost all predator animals who are supposed to be there to hunt, kill and eat these mammals and birds. That, in case you were wondering, is why the natural process created them. However, in my area, which is still wooded in the back, several people care for a colony of feral cats. I have trapped and had sexually incapacitated 15, at a cost (with a discount) of nearly $100 a cat for the operation, blood tests and inoculations. They are by no means suited to be pets. We provide food and several forms of shelter for them. Some of them are quite chubby.
I will not claim they have never taken a bird or squirrel, but only the slow, ill or unobservant. That is a predator’s natural function. I feed the wildlife as well, and there are plenty of all local varieties up on the feeders every day. By the way, we also have foxes, raccoons, opossums and skunks passing by, but not as many as there ought to be. Too many lay dead by the roadside – shall we eliminate motor vehicles? These folks will also hunt mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and eggs. Still, the air is full of song, squirrels bounce from tree to tree in profusion and the garden hops with toads in the summer.
Why are we allowing bees and bats to become extinct and picking on cats? M-O-N-E-Y !!! Can you say Monsanto???
Considering the country is 16 trillion in debt with 2 wars and 30+ million out of work. I would think the Smithsonian and USFWS would be a little more careful funding these types of research. Please this isnt the first study on cats and its hardly rocket science. Im sure the birders are drooling over this article.
This is a big claim based upon “systematic review of every U.S.-based cat predation study “. Whenever I have presented documentation on experiments or studies I presented the actual data so the reader could review the acutal data to insure that the conclusion was soley based upon data.
Can you please provide the actual data that you used?
Thank you
I thought this was a great presentation of the information found in multiple studies. I appreciate that you have brought awareness to the fact that feral cats are changing the diversity of small wildlife. Most importantly, you brought to light that humans are at the root of this problem, therefore it is our responsibility to solve it. There are humane ways to control overpopulation and they should be utilized. Our current efforts aren’t enough. Maybe we should use our ingenuity to tackle this from a different angle. I still love little kitties, even if they are pint-sized killing machines.
Feral cat advocates: If someone were to release millions of ball pythons into Florida, do you think they should be culled? Or should they start a TNR program for ball pythons? Ball pythons are completely harmless to humans and, like cats, eat rodents. So it should be fine, right? Also, ball pythons won’t scratch your neighbor’s lawn furniture, ruin the paint job on their car, dig up and defecate in their garden, crap in their child’s sandbox, or urinate over their belongings.
“This article completely ignores the BENEFITS of Cats killing billions of small mammals annually. Religious zealots in the middle ages once decided to kill all the cats in Egypt. This led to a boom in rat populations that led to the Black Plague! Cats killing small mammals, especially mice and rats, is ESSENTIAL to human city life and civilized farming lifestyle. They are controlling the populations of small wildlife that spread diseases! I can understand that we ought to reduce feral cat populations in wildlife sanctuaries, but within city limits, eradicating feral cat populations, instead of just controlling their populations, could be a deadly mistake!”
Oh please. You do know that cats can carry and spread the plague too, right? Also, hygiene was pretty much non-existent back then. Having more cats around WOULD NOT have stopped the plague from spreading, no matter how much you like to pretend it would.
Geckos are small, harmless, and love to each cockroaches. Should people with cockroach infestations be able release a bunch of lizards into the environment?
Owls, foxes, snakes and other native animals prey upon rodents. You can also try not to live like a slob if you don’t want rodents in your house.
I find it funny how someone is “evil” and “barbaric” if they don’t want a feral animal going around killing other animals for fun, but cat lovers are free to want snakes, lizards, native rodents, chipmunks, rabbits, etc. dead. They’re also free to let loose an invasive animal specifically to kill harmless animals they don’t like.
Imagine if a dog owner released a bunch of small terriers to eradicate cats because he doesn’t like them. Cat lovers would be livid. However, its fine for the cat lover to release an animal to kill harmless wildlife that they find “icky.”
Cat owners are some of the most irrational pet owners out there.
I’ve never come across a fish hobbyist who doesn’t support the culling of invasive fish species. I’ve never come across a reptile owner who disagreed with culling iguanas (which are basically harmless to people), pythons and other types of escaped reptiles. I’ve never seen dog owners argue that feral dogs should be free to run around as they please, no matter how small and harmless they are. I’ve never seen any bird owners advocate letting their birds loose to roam free as they please, even though, again, they are harmless to people.
I don’t hate cats and I don’t really care whether or not feral cats are killed, but I find it funny the level of denial cat owners display about this issue.
I do, however, think cat owners should be required to keep their animal under control just like every other pet owner is required too. If your animal is loose and bothering the neighbors, no matter your attachment to it, it is a pest, just like a rat or cockroach. People aren’t expected to put up with free-roaming dogs, and they shouldn’t be expected to put up with free-roaming cats either.
When we first moved to Lake Candlewood in CT 1996, every winter from January through April, thousands of waterfowl congregated on the windward shore. Common mergansers, eiders. This year, there are less then a dozen common eiders on the lake. Do you truely believe feral cats decimated the thousands of waterfowl that used to pass through here?
I have been managing feral cat colonies the last six years. These homeless pets live in areas where humans dump their garbage, including unwanted cats, because the human beings are too ignorant to spay their own pets. If humans were more respectful of God’s creations there would not only be fewer homeless pets, but more healthy natural habitat for wildlife to prosper in. Please focus your energy on nurturing the wildlands and encouraging low cost spay and neuter.
None of this is information is new. People will always find the statistics to support their point of view, whether it be in politics, as a Democrat/Republican or a cat hater/cat lover.
Instead of trying to convince others of my point of view, I have attached 2 links I find very interesting regarding the Smithsonian Institute, the National Zoo and a post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Nico Dauphine of the Migratory Bird Center, who was found guilty of animal cruelty by poisoning cats.
Does anyone else see the irony that, even though she was found guilty of animal cruelty by poisoning cats, Dr. Dauphine of the Migratory Bird Center was involved in this “research”? Just the name alone, Migratory Bird Center, is a pretty good indication of which side of the fence this group is going to be on.
Why not do a little reading on Dr. Nico Dauphine and the articles she has written over the years and see why, perhaps, having her involved in this research may have resulted in the scientific findings of this article.
http://www.voxfelina.com/2011/06/friends-with-benefit/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+VoxFelina+%28Vox+Felina%29
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-10-31/local/35279638_1_animal-cruelty-rat-poison-cats
Estimated to killup to 976 million birds per year….window glass
Estimated to kill up to 174 million birds per year…high tension line collisions
Estimated to kill 60 million birds per year…..cars
Estimated to kill 72 million birds per year….pesticides
Estimated to kill hundreds of thousands of birds per year…..oil spills
Estimated to kill about 15 million birds a year in North America….hunters
Estimated to kill up to 2 million birds per year….Oil and wastewater pits
Estimated to kill 33 thousand birds per year…wind turbines
Estimated to kill tens of thousands of large birds per year….electrocution/power polls
These figures were published in Jan 2010 on a major respected birding website.
In Chicago building owners have special crews to remove bird bodies from the sidewalks every day during migration because of all the glass buildings. I am sure other cities have to do this too.
Smithsonian do you have someone to pick up all the dead birds around your building?
My persepective, experience and reading does not support these claims. But this will not be a suitable forum to rebute. A far greater challenge to life of every kind are coyotes. They eat everything, EVERYTHING and they are growing in size and numbers.
But if we are really serious about dealing with invasive species, none has killed off more wildlife than the one you look at each morning in the mirror. Unfortunately cats and humans share one great weakness. Neither is capable of restricting its own drive to reproduce and reproduce and reproduce.
How do we deal with that one?
How do cats pose the dominant threat proposed by this paper, when research suggests that towers ALONE kill far more birds. As Audubon states: “The Important Bird Areas Program recognizes that coupled with global warming, habitat loss and fragmentation are the most serious threats facing populations of birds across America and around the world.”
This is an old and dirty business. It is irresponsible to bring less than the best and most objective science to the vital environmental problems we face. Yet, across America animals (NOT only cats) are being scapegoated. It is a very dangerous game to play with life and death at stake, the biosphere and our own.
Woodman is an obvious propagandist, seemingly hate filled as well. If you don’t wish to simply ignore it, you would be wise to subject it to scrutiny. There are a lot of problems.
Important reading to consider to quantify the results published here in this skewed, misleading and harmful article:
http://www.voxfelina.com/2013/02/garbage-in-garbage-out/
So I’m going to assume that all these people complaining about cats killing birds are pure vegans who don’t eat eggs or poultry because if not, each and every one of them is PERSONALLY responsible for the murder and suffering of BILLIONS of birds called chickens and turkeys. What a bunch of hypocrites. Complaining about the death of one kind of “pretty” bird while paying for the murder and suffering of birds in factory farms. I hope these so-called scientists actually put their money where their poultry-eating mouths are!
If the Smithsonian really cares about birds, maybe they can stop serving them in their food facilities?
This is just bad science and this claim has been going on for sometime. We have experienced an explosion of rodents and other critters since the recent completion of the ICC which is less than a mile from our house. I welcome cats to come and thin out some of these unwanted animals in my yard. Sadly, these critters have been displaced from their usual habitat. I have seen an increase of hawks in the area which also kill their share of birds and rodents. Is anyone keeping track of them? Of course not, because they were almost driven to distinction and people want them to thrive. Quit picking on cats!!!
It is obvious that some commentators are either totally ignorant of how science works, or are deliberately trying to annoy readers with their comments about how the study was conducted. Others, like johnathon who said “Nowhere in the article is there a discussion of cat predation in normal bird habitat.” seem to have failed to really read the article. The article clearly references situations where cats have driven species into extinction on previously isolated islands–in other words in “normal bird habitat.” One woman wrote that her tame lil puddy tat “didn’t kill much.” There are 86 million tame lil puddy tats in the US, each “not killing much.” But the article clearly said tame cats are only a small part of the problem, it is the feral cats that do most of the kiling.
Woodsman – Please seek treatment – you need some help!
The study you base your article on was thoroughly discredited years ago as a fraud deliberately perpetrated by a woman with a hateful agenda; she was subsequently fired! Anyone who wants scientific studies should go to the Ally Cat Allies website.
Judging by the frequent piles of bird feathers in my yard, I suspect cats kill even more birds than this study claims. How can cities be ‘bird sanctuaries’ and allow cats to roam free? My high school biology text said all stray cats should be killed (1958), and now I see why.
This is part of a natural food-chain that’s being discussed. Small Birds, Rodents, Lizards, and small Snakes are FOOD for small Cats in any ecosystem. So getting people all worked up over them eating what they’re supposed to be eating makes no sense at all. This isn’t Science! Its inflamatory tabloid journalism.
Does anyone scream “foul” when a Cheetah chases down and kills the slowest Gazelle in the herd? Cats don’t eat the quick birds, only the slow ones. Taking their DNA out of the gene pool and making the species better adapted to their environment.
There’s only one species of land animal on this planet that’s a serious problem, HUMANS.
Destroying cats is neither hating cats nor a fear of cats.
Why do mentally-unbalanced and psychotic cat-advocates always presume that if someone is removing a highly destructive, deadly disease spreading, human-engineered invasive-species from the native habitat to restore it back into natural balance that they must hate that organism? Does someone who destroys Zebra Mussels, Kudzu, African Cichlids, Burmese Pythons, Brown Tree Snakes, or any of the other myriad destructive invasive-species have some personal problem with that species? (Many of which are escaped PETS that don’t even spread any harmful diseases, unlike cats.) Your ignorance and blatant biases are revealed in your declaring that people who destroy cats must somehow hate or fear cats. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It is people who let a destructive invasive-species roam free that tortures-to-death all other wildlife, wasted for their cats’ play-toys, that have zero respect for ALL life. They don’t even care about their cats dying a slow torturous death from exposure, animal attacks, diseases, starvation, dehydration, becoming road-kill, environmental poisons, etc., the way that ALL stray cats suffer to death. They don’t even respect their fellow human being. This speaks more than volumes about your disgusting character. People like you should be locked up in prison for life for your cruelty to all animals, cruelty to your own cats as well as all the native wildlife that you let your cats skin alive or disembowel alive. If you let cats roam free you are violating every animal-abandonment, animal-neglect, animal-endangerment, and invasive-species law in existence.
If people do hate cats today, have LEARNED to hate cats today, you have nobody but yourself and everyone just like you to blame. YOU are the reason people are now realizing that all excess cats must be destroyed on-site and on-sight. You’ve done so much to make people care about cats, haven’t you. If you want to do something about it, direct your sadly and sorely misplaced energies at those that are causing the problem, not at those who are actually solving it AND HAVE SOLVED IT 100%.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT and THE FAULT OF EVERYONE JUST LIKE YOU. You have NOBODY but yourselves to blame.
You can take that all the way to the very last shot-dead cat’s grave.
While it is true that overpopulation of humans is the #1 problem that we and all other species face today; this doesn’t excuse all the responsible, wise, and intelligent people from cleaning-up and stopping all the ecological disasters caused by those phenomenally stupid and criminally negligent people that should have never been born in the first place.
Cats are a man-made (through selective breeding) invasive species. And as such, cats being a product of man’s intervention, are no less of a man-made environmental disaster than any oil-spill, radiation-fallout, chemical-spill, or other environmental disaster _caused_by_man_. Cats are _not_exempt_ from having to be removed from every natural environment, wherever and whenever they are found away from supervised confinement. Just as you would do all you can to remove Zebra Mussels from any waterway where they don’t belong. Or Burmese Pythons and African Cichlids from every habitat where they exist in N. America today. Burmese Pythons and African Cichlids started out as pets too. Many of our destructive invasive species pests started out as PETS discarded by criminally-irresponsible humans. (Or from pets’ habitats, e.g. Eurasian Watermilfoil that is annihilating native aquatic life in many regions of the USA came from people irresponsibly dumping their pet-fish aquarium water into lakes and streams.) And guess what happens to all those other non-native pets that became destructive invasive species? They are destroyed on-site by any means possible — no questions asked — none required.
Cats are even worse than an oil-spill of multi-continent-sized proportions. They not only kill off rare and endangered marine-mammals along all coastlines (just as all oil-spills do) from run-off from the land carrying cats’ Toxoplasma gondii parasites, they also destroy the complete food-chain in every ecosystem where cats are found today. From smallest of prey that is gutted and skinned alive for cats’ tortured play-toys (not even used for food, just for senseless play), up to the top predators that are starved to death from cats destroying their ONLY food sources. (Precisely what cats caused on my own land not long ago.) They don’t destroy just birds. They destroy everything that moves — directly or indirectly. They will even destroy valuable native vegetation by destroying those animals that are required pollinators for those plants or those that act as seed dispersers for those plants (as many smaller rodent and bird species do) or those that act as pest-control for those plants. Cats can and will wipe out whole ecosystems eventually — animal and plant.
Cats need to be made to disappear from all non-native habitats — PERMANENTLY. And the sooner the better. They are breeding out of control at an exponential rate. The reason for “the sooner the better” is that you can only hope you can halt the problem before it is beyond the reach of any method you eventually choose. Luckily, I caught the problem in time where I live (by humanely shooting and burying every last cat I spotted, collared or not, I have a box full of collars to prove it, totally LEGAL, believe it or not). It seems nobody else is faring as well — their time is being wasted by cat-lovers trying to stop them from doing the right thing. Asking or listening to any deranged invasive species advocate for advice on how to clean up the ecological disaster that they created and perpetuate is about as useful as asking your local career thieves for advice and help to hide your valuables from their daily motives and activities. Ignore anything they might say and you too will solve the problem where you live.
It worked 100% where I live!
Licensing and laws do nothing to curb the problem. If cats are required to be licensed then cat-lovers just stop putting collars on their cats, as they did by me. And they won’t even bother getting them micro-chipped, especially not that They want absolutely nothing that can hold them legally responsible, liable, and accountable for the actions of their cats. It’s why many of them even keep cats in the first place. We’re not talking about the topmost responsible citizens of the world, you know. They don’t want that responsibility of what their cat has done coming back on them. If they had even one iota of a sense of responsibility and respect for all other lives on this planet we wouldn’t even be having these discussions.
On the other hand, I found something that DOES work, and works well, and works fast (well, relative to the years it takes trying to reason with deceitful and lying cat-lovers that accomplishes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING). Where I live cat-lovers have learned that _ALL_ cats, stray and feral, collared or not, ear-tipped or not (because TNR con-artist liars now just clip cats’ ears only, WITHOUT sterilizing or vaccinating them, to protect their hoarded cats from being trapped and euthanized), _ALL_ their cats are humanely shot on sight and buried whenever found away from supervised confinement.
The ONLY thing that works is destroying any of their cats found outdoors off their property. They either learn to stop getting more cats that die under the wheels of cars or from animal attacks, or they finally learn how to be a responsible pet owner, respectful neighbor, and learn to keep their invasive species animal under confined supervision, as it should be. Win win win all around. You can either destroy their cat for them humanely, or let their lack of concern for their cat cause it to die inhumanely. By destroying their cat for them humanely you are showing them that you care more about their cat than even they do. A bullet is by far the most humane death that any free-roaming cat will ever meet. Anything else is all inhumanely downhill from there. Their only other options are being hit by cars, environmental poisons, cat & animal attacks, disease and parasites, freezing, etc., etc.
You can’t train a cat to stay home but I found that, in time, you CAN train a cat-owner into being a responsible pet-owner and a respectable neighbor. Most of them are so phenomenally stupid, disrespectful, and criminally irresponsible though that you have to make at least 12-15 of their cats permanently disappear before they even start to figure out what they’ve been doing wrong all during their sorry, useless, and pathetic lives. (Though the ones by me were uniquely cretinized and lobotomized. I had to shoot and bury many hundreds of their cats before they started to learn.)
If you live in an area where its not legal to use firearms to destroy any animal that is threatening the health and safety of you, your family, your animals, or property (as it *IS* legal in most every area of the nation — shoot to maim is animal cruelty but shoot to kill is a perfectly legal way to humanely destroy any nuisance animal on your own property); then check into laws regarding air-rifles with ballistics speeds of 700-1200 fps and using pointed vermin-pellets in no-firearms zones. Many of the newer ones even come with their own sound-suppressor designs built-in, being specifically designed for shooting vermin cats in urban areas, the demand is that great. Failing that, then there’s always the SSS and TDSS Cat Management Programs that are exploding in popularity worldwide. Shoot, Shovel, & Shut-Up; or Trap, Drown, Shovel, & Shut-Up. Both methods are legal on every square foot of this earth. No local laws were violated if it never happened! (Where cats have already learned to evade all trapping methods, then inexpensive generic 1-adult-strength acetaminophen (overseas a.k.a. paracetamol) pain-relievers are a more species specific vermin poison. But you really need to retrieve and dispose of that carcass safely so that native wildlife won’t die from the many diseases cats spread even after their death.)
I don’t see anyone dumping cats where I live anymore. They don’t even adopt more than can be kept under lock & key 24/7. When driving through the area I don’t see even one cat on anyone’s doorsteps anymore. I always keep an eye out to see if there are more free-roaming cats that will have to be shot one day. And if I’ll have to leave fish-oil trails on all the roadsides again, leading right to my IR surveillance system and laser-sighted rifle. (Got more than 70% of the hundreds of them in the area this way, VERY effective.)
Leaving ANY of their invasive species cat outside in my area means instant death for that cat. You’d think everyone else could learn from this simple lesson. The quickest way to solve an unwanted animal and irresponsible pet-owner problem is to let everyone know that you will quickly and humanely destroy every last one of their unwanted, uncared-for, or unsupervised animals for them. They either grow up fast or, far more plausible, dump their animals elsewhere to become someone else’s problem.
You just can’t be an enabler of criminally irresponsible spineless and heartless idiots — or they remain that way. (At least where you live, anyway.)
I agree with the woodsman. I used to live on the Oregon coast. A neighbor , a DuPont heir used feed feral cats, you can not believe the damage they caused. Bring back the coyotes.
I agree with Joe McCarthy (40). This article is using discredited data and drawing ridiculous conclusions. I am ashamed of Smithsonian for publishing this.
During the first quarter century that I owned my home, the entire neighborhood woke to the soft cooing of mourning doves. Then someone moved next door, didn’t clean up after their dog but once a week, that drew roaches and rats, which in turn necessitated their letting their cat out each morning at 5 a.m. One year this beast murdered 16 doves on my property alone. By last year the flock was reduced to a single pair. This year there’s no sign of any. A hatch of lizards the size of a grape fruit was reduced to one last year. This year none. Our city does not allow trapping of cats. When will some wildlife organization step in and protect these gentle creatures that bring so much enjoyment tp urban areas?
I have never understood the attacks on cats being killers of wildlife…think about it…we all kill something to survive. As a retired licensed wildlife rehabilitator I would like to say having 1400 wildlife critters come through each year ~ I saw as many hit by car,pesticide poisoning, dog caught as I did cat caught wildlife…so why exactly do we want to blame and kill all the cats??
It’s really sad to see the numbers up so high. I used to have bird feeders up around in my trees all the time and see hummingbirds, bluebirds and jays and even pilated woodpeckers in my yard hanging out.
My neighbourhood is infested with nieghbour’s cats, and they just let them wander around. They are fed all the time, and I can’t keep an eye on my feeders all the time. The cats dig up my garden, and it has saddened my heart to see almost every day (except during winter days) that I would see the badly mangled carcass of the birds around the feeders. The cats would just kill them, rip their wings apart (I’ve seen a couple with the wings torn off at the sides, body not even eaten….just mangled and obviously played with).
There are a couple of times I heard screams in the yard, and I had to rush out only to see the cat dash away with the bird, or the bird dying on the way to the avian vet.
The last straw was in the summer where I left one of my windows open. I have a few budgies in my house. One of the cats got in through the bars of my open window around 2am at night and managed to slide open the cage. THEY GOT IN MY HOUSE! And it killed one of my 12 year old budgie (I’ve had this budgie when I was 14 years old) and her baby who was only 5 months old at the time. I couldn’t save the mother; she was bitten in the neck. The baby was taken to the vet where he died 3 days later from wound infection. The mate of my bird became so depressed and he died 5 months later.
I had to take down all my feeders, and my yard is now almost free of birds. It’s a very sad sacrifice….words can’t describe my grief.