12/13/2023

Here’s Scientific Proof Your Cat Will Eat Almost Anything

Free-ranging domestic cats eat more than 2,000 animal species across the globe

Don’t let their fluff fool you: Your cat was built for murder. Felines, no matter how chonky, eepy or boopable, are remarkably adaptable obligate carnivores, down to eat just about anything that fits in their mouth.

Well-intentioned (or… threatening?) gifts of dead birds, rats and lizards are familiar to outdoor cat owners—even my shockingly uncoordinated indoor cat has killed a spider or two in her day. But an analysis published today in Nature Communications, led by Auburn University ecologist Christopher Lepczyk, reveals that there’s shockingly little that cats don’t eat.

Compiling evidence from a century of research from across the globe, Lepczyk’s team identified more than 2,000 animal species eaten by cats—and that’s only what scientists have recorded so far. Of those species, 347 are at risk of extinction and 11 have since been listed as extinct in the wild (or for good). Scientists have known for ages that feline predation is an ecological nightmare, but "it's a challenging problem that we still have yet to deal with," said Peter Marra, dean of the Earth Commons Institute and biology professor at Georgetown University, who was not involved in this study.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.