Sorry to burst your bubble, but that cute little fuzzy cat of yours, the one that you like to dress up in funny hats and dedicate Tumblrs to, is actually a hardcore killer. Housecats average 2.1 kills a week, according to research from the University of Georgia and National Geographic, with everything from birds to lizards and snakes falling victim to the cuddly predators.The data come from UGA’s Kittycams project, in which university researchers strap on cameras supplied by National Geographic to housecats to track what they do. The collected footage shows that cats do normal cat stuff — sleeping, sniffing each other, fighting possums — but, at an average of every 17 hours outdoors, cats find something to kill.While that might not sound like a whole lot, it adds up when you consider there are millions of housecats running around the United States. With all of those fierce felines running around, local wildlife populations suffer."If we extrapolate the results of this study across the country and include feral cats, we find that cats are likely killing more than 4 billion animals per year, including at least 500 million birds. Cat predation is one of the reasons why one in three American bird species are in decline," said Dr. George Fenwick, President of American Bird Conservancy, in a release.For all the grief introduced species like mongooses get for killing native wildlife, we don’t tend to think of domestic cats in the same way. I’ll admit, it’s kinda cute when a cat shows up on your doorstep with a mangled bit of mouse gore in its mouth as a present, but the fact that well-fed housecats are still cruising around eating chipmunks, frogs, and birds with regularity has conservationists concerned."I think it will be impossible to deny the ongoing slaughter of wildlife by outdoor cats given the videotape documentation and the scientific credibility that this study brings," said Michael Hutchins, CEO of The Wildlife Society. "There is a huge environmental price that we are paying every single day that we turn our backs on our native wildlife in favor of protecting non-native predatory cats at all cost while ignoring the inconvenient truth about the mortality they inflict."Yeah, that does sound kind of breathless, but when cats killing hundreds of millions to billions of animals a year, they represent a huge wildlife management problem. And consider that 78 American bird species are listed as threatened or worse= by the IUCN, many of which can fall prey to your pets. What’s the answer? well, people are going to keep pets, and a study like this won’t change that. But with feral cats continuing to be a massive problem, for the love of all those critters out there, spay or neuter your cat.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.
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KittyCam in action. Image via KittyCam
I’m not sure that a cat could take down a chicken, but it probably wants to. Image via KittyCam
Not a cat’s best friend. Image via KittyCam
Cats think chipmunks are tasty. Image via KittyCam
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