And how can we tell for sure if it's good or bad? Does killing these birds and mammals help maintain the ecosystem balance (due to these birds and mammals not killing billions other animals down the food chain, or not spreading infections and viruses), or the other way around?

▲

Tangurena2 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Bad. There are Pacific islands where birds have become extinct due to cat predation.

In the US, I went to a university (sarcastically referred to as find another university) where the mascot was the burrowing owl. They build nests in the sandy soil in Southern Florida. They are becoming endangered due to feral cats hunting them. And there is always some battle between preservationists and crazy cat lovers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrowing_owl

Cats have a hunting instinct. No matter how well fed, they will continue to hunt. I remember living with a woman who rescued ex-breeder cats, which were all very fat. They still tried hunting lizards even being so fat that their belly hair rubbed off on the carpeting. Cats are not quite as bad as adult raccoons (who will kill every chicken in your coop just to eat one), but are not capable of hunting only what they need to eat.

▲

hobofan 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A prerequisite for there to even be a chance of cats being involved in ecosystem balance would be for the cats to exist purely as part of the ecosystem, as in being exposed to negative feedback effects to it (e.g. starvation due to overhunting). As it stands, they are being fed by humans and mostly exist outside the ecosystem, and every kill by them only drains resources from the ecosystem.

	▲	shellfishgene a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think the majority of pet cats live in cities and suburan settings, which are anyway highly artificial ecosystems. Also, as noted in another comment already, birds are fed in the same areas also, and provided nesting boxes, which probably increases numbers (or rather the carrying capacity) quite a bit. Studies seem to show that diversity has gone down, but biomass has even gone up a bit over 50 years [1]. The loss of species is apparently also related to removal of old buildings and modern ones lacking spaces to breed for birds like sparrows and swifts, and removal of landscape features that specialists depend on. Maybe cats play a role though. The linked article says 90% of the mortality is caused by un-owned cats. I'd imagine that feral cats just replace wild cats in Europe, and thus do exist in the ecosystem with negative feedback (if they are not fed). Not sure about North America, as there is not really a small wild cat species I think? 1 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00063657.2021.1...
	▲	amanaplanacanal 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		On the other hand, humans have done a pretty good job of removing most of the other predators in the environment. Domestic cats must be replacing some of the natural predation that is no longer occurring.
	▲	boesboes 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Not saying you are wrong, but we also feed birds and rodents, intentionally and by the by products of our society existing.

▲

hackersnooze1 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sometimes I feel like people on this website act to be as obtuse and ignorant as possible to prove some kind of point. This is a great example

▲

homeonthemtn a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very bad. Cats are fluffy little psychos. They'll clear out anything that moves for fun

	▲	cindyllm a day ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

▲

andrewstuart a day ago | parent | prev [-]

What a ridiculous gaslighting question.

Asking us to prove that cats killing wildlife is a bad thing.

A guy once told me that they remove the fallen logs from the Canadian forests because fallen trees are messy and ruin the forest. How do you even respond to such a stupid concept?

	▲	6510 a day ago \| parent [-]
		Not entirely, we should be worried about almost all of it but we shouldn't underestimate the reproduction rate of mice and rats that are quite successful in urban areas. If we were to remove all domestic cats we would almost immediately be overrun by hundreds of billions of them and they could quite literally end us. Mice population can double in 3 weeks. If you start with a few hundred million 30 weeks would turn into a few hundred billion and 60 weeks a few hundred trillion (2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024) If they are currently killing 30B you might start with 15B mice rather than a few hundred million.