【连线20130130】悲剧：美国的猫咪吃掉了250亿只小鸟和小型哺乳动物

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Catastrophe: felines kill up to 25 billion birds and small mammals in US

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/30/catastrophe
[size=0.8462em]By Olivia Solon
[size=0.8462em]30 January 13

Domestic cats in the United States kill up to 25 billion birds, mice, voles and other small mammals each year, according to a studyby biologists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Washington.

According to the research, feline predators kill somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 and 20.7 billion small mammals each year. This means that cats are responsible for the death of more creatures than habitat loss, agricultural chemicals or hunting.

Cats that are allowed outside tend to kill between 30 and 47 birds each in Europe and the USA every year, and between 177 and 299 mammals, according to previous research. The final figure was reached by timesing this figure by the number of domestic cats. There are around 84 million of them in the USA, a few million of which are indoors cats. There are then between 30 and 80 million free-randing "unowned" cats, which don't have an owner, but survive on good will and, it seems, wild animals.

"We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds and 6.9 to 20.7 billion mammals annually. Unowned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality."

These estimates are much greater than previously thought, and shows that cats are likely the "single greatest source of anthropogenic [man-induced' mortality for US birds and mammals". The study tried to find out how many reptiles and amphibians are also killed by cats, but could not find enough data.

The authors recommend that people intervene to reduce this impact. According to an earlier study, feral cats are responsible for the extinction of at least 33 species of birds.

A separate study from the Mammal Society estimates that the UK's cats catch up to 275 million prey items per year, 55 million of which are birds. However, these estimates were based on the number of animals that cats brought home, and did not take into account the number of animals the cats caught but didn't bring home to their owners. The most frequently caught birds seemed to be house sparrows, bluetits, blackbirds and starlines.

Meanwhile in New Zeland, an economist called Gareth Morgan is waging waron "serial killer" cats, and is calling for a ban on murderous felines in order to protect the islands birds, 37 percent of which are endangered. He believes that cats should be slowly phased out by being neutered or spayed so they cannot reproduce, and that no new cats should be imported. He is referring to the problem as a "catastrophe".

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