Feral cats have been the domestic mouse catchers for years but now they are living life in the wild eating reptiles and small animals. The experts believe that these cats aren’t any harm to the human existence and should not be disturbed while a lot of conservationists believe that these cats are an environmental catastrophe. According to the recent studies, in the U.S. alone, the feral cats eat up more than 2.4 billion birds and over 12.3 billion small mammals every year.
Well, the U.S. is not the only place in the world that has these cuddly killers eating up big numbers of reptiles and small mammals. The recent reports suggest that the feral cats in Australia are increasing every day and are feeding upon more than 1 million lizards every day that can bring some species close to the line of extinction in the coming years.
In order to come up with an estimation, the experts and researchers looked at the previous studies that performed investigations on the cat predation on small reptiles and mammals such as snakes, lizards, etc. The researchers analyzed the feces samples to determine what type of creatures the Aussie cats have been eating all these years. The results turned out that these small love handles are not that picky when it comes to feeding on tiny reptiles. There have been 258 different species of reptiles in the poop samples including the 11 threatened reptile species that the cats feed on. The cats also have eaten turtles a few times.
On an average, one feral cat in Australia kills around 225 small reptiles per year, as stated by John Woinarski from the University of Charles Darwin who is also the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Wildlife Research. He also stated that some cats eat an alarming rate of reptiles every day and more than 40 reptiles could be found in a single cat’s stomach.
