Cats may be cute and furry and make great entertainment videos for YouTube, but these adorable creatures are killing billions of birds in the U.S. every year, according to a new study.
Cats that live in the wild or indoor pets allowed to roam outdoors kill from 1.4 billion to as many as 3.7 billion birds in the U.S., a report by Nature Communications revealed Tuesday.
The study also says that from 6.9 billion to as many as 20.7 billion mammals - mainly mice, shrews, rabbits and voles - are killed by cats annually in the Lower 48.
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.
Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and an author of the report, said the mortality figures that emerge from the new model "are shockingly high."
"I was stunned," said ornithologist Peter Marra of the Smithsonian's Conservation Biology Institute. He and Smithsonian colleague Scott Loss, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Will conducted the study.
"When we ran the model, we didn't know what to expect," said Marra.
He says overall, the number of birds and small animals being killed are high enough that cats and their hunting could be causing some wildlife populations to decline in some areas. But he says it will take more work to figure out which species are being most affected.
