Late last year there were many articles on the Internet which stated that domestic cats eat more than 2000 species. In other words, domestic cats across the world preyed upon 2000+ different species of animal. It caused a lot of consternation in conservationists.
I have read one or two of the articles based on this study and I have checked out the study itself which is called, “A global synthesis and assessment of free-ranging domestic cat diet”. Link: A global synthesis and assessment of free-ranging domestic cat diet | Nature Communications
I could find nothing in the study which provides answers to the following questions:
- How many individual animals of each of these 2084 species are eaten by cats?
- Are any of the species becoming endangered because animals within the species are eaten by domestic cats?
Individual animals eaten
Let’s look at the first question above. On the analysis provided by this study, it is plausible to suggest that any small number of individual animals of the species are killed by domestic cats annually. If that is the case (and we don’t know because the study doesn’t mention it) domestic cat predation on any one species has no impact whatsoever on the species in terms of their survival in the wild. It’s irrelevant.
The way the study was set up means that all they were looking at was the number of species preyed upon by domestic cats. But to make the study meaningful you have to discover how many individual animals are preyed upon and the percentage of the total population number that these animals represent.
Are the species becoming endangered because of domestic cat predation?
Looking at the second question, which is linked to the first, there is no indication in the study that the domestic cat is making these prey animals extinct. The study does say that some of these species are endangered but as far as I can tell doesn’t specify that this endangerment is a result of domestic cat predation.
There are numerous reasons why animal species become endangered. The most common is loss of habitat due to human activities and human population growth and the other is persecution in some shape or form by humans.
Once again, looking at this study’s conclusions critically, we can’t conclude that it has any real meaning.
If you take things to extreme and argue that one individual animal of every one of these 2084 species is killed by domestic cats annually it would obviously be totally irrelevant.
But if you had evidence which stated that in many of the species the predation on individual animals by domestic cats was so intense that it made the species critically endangered, it would signal a real impact and meaningfulness in this study. I don’t see that conclusion.
Scaveging
Do domestic cats scavenge dead prey animals sometimes?
Certainly! Domestic cats do indeed scavenge dead prey animals on occasion. Their behavior can vary based on individual personality, environment, and circumstances. This points to the fact that domestic cats are less likely to cause species to be endangered in terms of extinction.
Conclusion
Fact check: the study which was very well reported in news media does not assist us in assessing the impact of domestic cats have on wildlife conservation. We need to know more.
RELATED: Big-headed invasive ants disrupt lion predation of Kenya’s zebras
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