Needs a Title

Cats have been introduced to approximately 170,000 of the world’s islands. Cats on islands have the ability to completely wipe out entire species due to those species not having natural carnivore predators and thus not being acquainted to life as prey. According to research done by Charles Darwin, island animals tend to be tamer than that of their mainland counterparts due to a lack of mammal predators. Tameness is defined as the animal’s acceptance of homosapien life around them, and thus the animals do not fear human predators in addition to the commonly assumed mammalian carnivores. For instance, New Zealand’s flightless bird, Lyall’s wren, or the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli), has gone extinct due to feral cats. When it first became observed by scientists in 1894, it was only found on Stephen’s Island. In February of 1894, cats were introduced to the island, and by the winter of 1895, a second generation of feral cats sought out the bird as prey. By 1925, the last of the birds had been killed off. There is no proof that habit destruction had much effect on the population of the bird.As of 2023, the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared twenty-one species in Hawaii, coined the “extinction capital of the world,” to be officially extinct. Of the twenty-one species, eight were birds. The Hawaiian Petrel is an endangered bird under legal protection by the seabird management project. They have found success in reducing predator cat numbers; however, Dr. Raine of the seabird management project says that it takes only one feral cat to kill a colony of birds. Land development has also caused the loss of habitat for many of the colonies, making them vulnerable to being hunted by cats. According to a published research article by the University of California, “[Cats] are considered responsible for at least 14% of global bird, mammal, and reptile extinctions and are the principal threat to almost 8% of critically endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles.” This is considered to be the minimum value due to the study being conducted specifically in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands. 

Through unrelated conditions, island fauna and flora populations have also dwindled. Invasive plant species taking over the islands, habitat loss, land exploitation, and climate change have played major roles in the increase of cat populations and ease of hunting, thus an increase in seabird endangerment. It may seem counterintuitive for cats or any predator to have better killing success in open habitats; however, when it comes to seabirds and islands, cats are better killers in open areas. They benefit from the decrease in native plant populations that coexist with native animals and simply from a decrease in plants generally. They are successful 70% of the time in an open “kill” area, as opposed to sheltered areas in which the success rate was under 20%. 

In the same study regarding open area hunting, published by the National Library of Medicine, the cats did not consume their prey in 28% of the kills. Not only do these cats pose a large threat to island bird populations and ecological damage, but they often kill and force species into endangerment for sport. A cat’s palette includes 90% of all species consumed. Cats are particularly damaging on islands, where they eat three times the number of species of conservation concern compared to what they eat on continents,” claims Phoebe Westen of The Guardian. They find the act of hunting mentally and physically stimulating. Although not human, cats contribute to ecological terrorist acts through killing birds that are not apparently necessary for their survival. 

References