• Signtist@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    This study is about the immense magnitude of cat predation, and your takeaway is that we shouldn’t limit owned cat predation simply because un-owned cat predation is higher…

    We estimate that cats in the contiguous United States annually kill between 1.3 and 4.0 billion birds (median=2.4 billion) (Fig. 1a), with ∼69% of this mortality caused by un-owned cats. The predation estimate for un-owned cats was higher primarily due to predation rates by this group averaging three times greater than rates for owned cats.

    This study estimates that annual bird deaths by owned cat predation in the US is around a 750 million median figure, and you’re just fine with that?