The Feral kid from Mad max II: The road warrior, Mowgli from the jungle book, Valentine Michael Smith from Stranger in a strangeland, and Feral cat all have one thing in common, they’re feral. Unlike the three aforementioned characters Feral cats are a huge quickly multiplying threat, from mass extinctions to diseases that can be transmitted to your cute non feral pet and even cuter native wildlife. So much talk of feral cats what exactly is a feral cat, is their population truly exploding, what is their ecological foot(paw)print, and just how are cities are dealing with their exploding Cat population.
Stray cats like Mowgli were once living with humans(domestic) but because of some unknown circumstance they ended up living in the wild, slowly …show more content…
That may be only .21% of the Unites States population but it is growing everyday and according to the Animal Welfare League of South Australia “One pair of unspayed and unneutered cats can exponentially be responsible for 420,000 kittens, over a 7 year period…Cats usually have 2 litters a season but may have more if there is a long period of warmer weather...Cats usually have 2 litters a season but …show more content…
As reported by Ecology.com “Cats are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually... they have been blamed for the global extinction of 33 species.” Just to put it in perspective if we humans would be small rodents and or birds then feral cats would eat us 3.25 times over. Another factor that make feral cats and environmental nightmare is as the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife reports “Unlike some predators, a cat 's desire to hunt is not suppressed by adequate supplemental food. Even when fed regularly by people, a cat 's motivation to hunt remains strong, so it continues hunting,” just like the species that domesticated it they like to hunt for sport. This is a big issue because cats eating this much and hunting for sport really destabilizes whole ecosystems. Feral cats also pose a huge issue to endangered animals right here in Texas for example the Attwaters Prairie-Chicken, native the western coast grasslands its population has been decimated by predators most notably the cat hunting both it and raiding its nest for eggs, Meadowlarks which are heavily predated by feral cats to the point of sometimes diminishing entire populations, the least tern of the Southwestern coast has been hunted to the point that in between 1966 and 2015 the population declined a total 88%, and also the countless native
Stray cats like Mowgli were once living with humans(domestic) but because of some unknown circumstance they ended up living in the wild, slowly …show more content…
That may be only .21% of the Unites States population but it is growing everyday and according to the Animal Welfare League of South Australia “One pair of unspayed and unneutered cats can exponentially be responsible for 420,000 kittens, over a 7 year period…Cats usually have 2 litters a season but may have more if there is a long period of warmer weather...Cats usually have 2 litters a season but …show more content…
As reported by Ecology.com “Cats are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually... they have been blamed for the global extinction of 33 species.” Just to put it in perspective if we humans would be small rodents and or birds then feral cats would eat us 3.25 times over. Another factor that make feral cats and environmental nightmare is as the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife reports “Unlike some predators, a cat 's desire to hunt is not suppressed by adequate supplemental food. Even when fed regularly by people, a cat 's motivation to hunt remains strong, so it continues hunting,” just like the species that domesticated it they like to hunt for sport. This is a big issue because cats eating this much and hunting for sport really destabilizes whole ecosystems. Feral cats also pose a huge issue to endangered animals right here in Texas for example the Attwaters Prairie-Chicken, native the western coast grasslands its population has been decimated by predators most notably the cat hunting both it and raiding its nest for eggs, Meadowlarks which are heavily predated by feral cats to the point of sometimes diminishing entire populations, the least tern of the Southwestern coast has been hunted to the point that in between 1966 and 2015 the population declined a total 88%, and also the countless native