Of cats and dogs

[AdamWargon]

@thedonsky, welcome to the iNat Forum!

@thedonsky

To the best of my knowledge, almost every one of them is feral in a sense that they are born outside and they live outside all the time

@kzoebel

You can add them to the project Ferals, Waifs, and Strays - Wild Observations of Domestic Species

@thedonsky

Are they even a meaningful contribution here?

@will

“These cats are out in the park all day killing birds and rodents. To call them “captive” and put them in the same category as someone’s house plant (and make it invisible on iNaturalist) seems to be missing the bigger impact they are having on park ecology. I’m more interested in studying impacts to the ecology in the state park (supposedly a protected wild area) than in determining if any of these cats has an owner somewhere. I know for a fact that the majority do not have owners.” @bruin_mike

@will

Feral cats are ecologically critical! A feral or outdoor cat kills hundreds if not thousands combined of birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, and amphibians in just one year. Feral cats have contributed to the extinction of numerous bird and mammal species namely in Australia, Hawaii, etc. as you probably know.

@yerbasanta

Cats kill billions of birds and mammals annually in the U.S. alone