Proposal
For my research essay, I will be detailing free-roaming cats’ effects on shearwater birds located on islands. Many people who are bird lovers often comment on the overhunting of birds done by cats. I will be only focusing on the predation of the shearwater variety of seabirds done by free-roaming cats.
- Cats are considered both predators and scavengers
- In the U.S. birds make up around 12.5%-25.2% of the content in a cat’s stomach
- Cats are the biggest killers on islands whereas on the mainland, cats are most likely scavengers
- They hunt using mainly stationary predation tactics
Predation of birds by domestic cats on a neotropical island
Background: This case report details the near extinction of Yelkouan shearwater seabirds on a neotropical island in South America. Domestic cats are a non-native species in the area and depend largely on predation for survival. On some islands, predatory domestic cats have decreased the population of seabirds due to hunting. These cats have been shown to display opportunistic behavior when stalking their prey which can be attributed to the availability of resources in the area. When there is a decrease in the fauna populations, cats turn to hunting live prey such as birds to meet their daily nutritional needs. Statistics have shown a direct correlation between the predatory behavior of domestic cats and the endangerment of Barau’s petrel seabirds and the near extinction of Yelkouan Shearwater seabirds.
Intention:
Predation by feral cats threatens great albatrosses
- Invasive non-native mammals most threaten seabirds as they did not evolve alongside one another
- Seabirds have not evolved to a point where they possess defenses against predation; they didn’t evolve alongside the presence of land predators (albatrosses)
Biology and Impacts of Pacific Island Invasive Species. 7. The Domestic Cat
https://www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/lyalls-wren
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna54068846
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2119000119
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4545751
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/12/cats-diet-2000-species-conservation-study-aoe
https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/why-cats-play-with-prey
https://doi.org/10.25959/23236526.v1
https://doi.org/10.2984/64.3.381
The Gamer 2.0
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
Let’s start with a review of your Proposal+5.
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Proposal
—You don’t have to tell the whole story in your Proposal paragraph, but you shouldn’t confuse readers if you can help it.
—”effects” is woefully vague while “shearwater birds located on islands” is wonderfully precise.
—”Many people” who are bird lovers EQUALS “Bird lovers,” but what we want to know here is whether it’s the bird lovers on the islands (also known as islanders) who “comment” on the “overhunting” done by cats.
—The whole thing could be replaced by “Islander bird lovers object to overhunting of birds by cats,” but I don’t know for sure that’s what you mean.
—If you DO mean most of that, you’ll need testimony from islanders that reflects their displeasure with the cats and a clear definition of what OVERHUNTING means.
—Is anybody on your subject islands working to reduce the overhunting? If so:
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First Source: Cats and Predation.
I followed the link to capture the URL and then pasted the link into the search field at BibGuru for APA 7 citations and got the following, which is the sort of notation you’ll need for all the sources in your Proposal+5, which (I hope you know) will be eventually expanded into your Annotated Bibliography and become part of your Portfolio.
Cats and predation. (n.d.). ALLEY CAT RESCUE. Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://www.saveacat.org/cats-and-predation.html
Now, on to the bullets:
—Are they both? Or are they “wrongly” considered to be both? If so, which?
—There may be clear argumentative value to describing how people judge cats, but you need to be clear whether your subject is the cats or people’s judgements about them.
—This is a very peculiar statistic that wouldn’t mean much in an argument out of context. Primarily we want to know if the number is an overall average for ALL US cats or for feral cats or for owned but free-roaming cats. Certainly factoring in the millions of cats who never leave the house would reduce the overall US statistic.
—I didn’t get the idea in the first bullet that “scavenger” meant devourer of already dead birds. The distinction will bear on any “contents of stomach” statistic and limit its usefulness in determining to what degree cats are responsible for bird death.
—I’ve been wondering about that as I observe bird behavior in the park on my dog walks. It’s hard to imagine any animal quick enough to sneak up on a bird.
OVERALL
I know it’s VERY early in the process to begin drawing fine conclusions of fact from your research, but from the very first notation we begin shaping our ultimate claims by including or excluding material from our bibliographic entries. Take care in your notes to accurately reflect the material; otherwise, you mislead yourself later when you refer to your notes for guidance on how to summarize the source.
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I’ll remove this post from Feedback Please for the time being, SleepyCat.
When you revise it, or if you want more Feedback at any time, put it back into Feedback Please and leave a Reply that I will see at the top of the sidebar.
Thanks!
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ornate! WHO Issues Alert Over New COVID Variant 2025 nice
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