page_title: Cat
section_title: Impact on wildlife
hierarchical_section_title: Cat / Behavior / Impact on wildlife
caption_attribution_description: Domestic [Bombay] cat eating a House Sparrow she brought to the home of her owner
context_page_description: The cat is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is often referred to as the domestic cat to distinguish it from the wild members of the family. A cat can either be a house cat, a farm cat or a feral cat; the latter ranges freely and avoids human contact. Domestic cats are valued by humans for companionship and their ability to hunt rodents. About 60 cat breeds are recognized by various cat registries.
  The cat is similar in anatomy to the other felid species: it has a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth and retractable claws adapted to killing small prey. Its night vision and sense of smell are well developed. Cat communication includes vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling and grunting as well as cat-specific body language. It is a solitary hunter but a social species. It can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears, such as those made by mice and other small mammals. It is a predator that is most active at dawn and dusk. It secretes and perceives pheromones.
context_section_description: On islands, birds can contribute as much as 60% of a cat's diet. In nearly all cases, however, the cat cannot be identified as the sole cause for reducing the numbers of island birds, and in some instances, eradication of cats has caused a "mesopredator release" effect; where the suppression of top carnivores creates an abundance of smaller predators that cause a severe decline in their shared prey. Domestic cats are, however, known to be a contributing factor to the decline of many species, a factor that has ultimately led, in some cases, to extinction. The South Island piopio, Chatham rail, and the New Zealand merganser are a few from a long list, with the most extreme case being the flightless Lyall's wren, which was driven to extinction only a few years after its discovery.
  One feral cat in New Zealand killed 102 New Zealand lesser short-tailed bats in seven days. In the US, feral and free-ranging domestic cats kill an estimated 6.3 – 22.3 billion mammals annually.
  In Australia, the impact of cats on mammal populations is even greater than the impact of habitat loss. More than one million reptiles are killed by feral cats each day, representing 258 species. Cats have contributed to the extinction of the Navassa curly-tailed lizard and Chioninia coctei.
caption: A black cat eating a house sparrow
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