Cats are our favorite pets – and are considered by many to be “cute velvet paws”. But the animals are less harmless than their image suggests: they can pose a real threat to biodiversity.
Unlike dogs, domestic cats are only half domesticated and genetically very similar to their wild relatives, wild cats. There is therefore a good dose of wildness in every room tiger. This also means that many of the animals’ original instincts are still very pronounced – for example, hunting.
Conservationists are critical of this property of Felis silvestris catus. Because the taste of our domestic cats for mice, birds and other small animals could pose a threat to biodiversity. In fact, researchers have recently found that free-range cats pose a greater threat to local wildlife populations than expected. Accordingly, the house tigers have a greater influence on the ecosystems in their neighborhood than wild predators native to them.
“Because the house cats are additionally fed, they kill fewer animals than wild hunters per day. But their areas are so small that the effect increases. Add to that the high density of domestic cats in some areas, ”explains Roland Kays from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
But not only domestic cats that live in humans are problematic in this regard. The spread of overgrown domestic cats also has far-reaching consequences – especially if they mess up established communities as an invasive species in which there were originally no cats. According to studies, a quarter of all birds, reptiles and mammals that are extinct in the modern era are responsible for cats.
In Australia alone, offspring of former domestic cats are considered to be the cause of the disappearance of 27 domestic species, more than 100 other species are threatened by the hunters. Humans once brought cats to the continent as pest control. But now they are among the greatest enemies of Australian biodiversity.