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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Australia’s feral cats kill more than 800 million mammals every year

Pet cats tend to kill non-native species, but feral felines slay more than 400 million native mammals annually.
Red ginger tabby cat sitting balanced on a wooden fence looking up at something that got its attention.

Australia’s 3.9 million pet cats kill roughly 180 million mammals a year, and feral cats’ toll is even higher. Credit: Chris Mirek Freeman/Alamy

Millions of feral cats roam Australia, where they grow fat and sleek on a diet that includes large helpings of native mammals. Now, Brett Murphy at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, and a large cast of co-authors have combined estimates of cat prevalence with surveys of mammalian remains in cat poo and stomachs to estimate the total number of their prey.

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Nature 571, 9 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02001-z

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