Cats (Felis catus), most of the people in the world love these miaows. From the beginning of the domestication of cats during the early agricultural development in the Neolithic Era, nowadays most of the households possess a domesticated cat in their houses either as pets or as wandering ones. I know people love these cuties as they are really attractive and affectionate animals. By producing these words I’m not going to talk about the cuteness or their dearness to the pet owners.
Literally, in the wild, cat family is a carnivorous group which lies in the upper levels of the food chains. They are kind of apex predators that having greater adaptations in ambush hunting to acquire their energy. And they play a major roll in the balance of lower-level animals in the food chain and thereby maintaining their living ecosystems. Mostly in the wild, the upper-level animals are much lower in number than the lower level animals in a food chain. This happens to have a balanced predator-prey relationship and intraspecific relationships. I;e increasing the number of predator species tends to exploit some lower-level animals and thereby destroying the ecosystem. But this is not happening as increasing the predatory species exert pressure on their own species along the time when decreasing their prey species and ultimately come to an equilibrium.
I know for someones the above facts sometimes going to be boring. But, I want to elaborate by writing these words how the domesticated affecting our urban environment. Even though cats are highly affectionate creatures, evolutionary, they are, in fact, brutal predators. Your cute cat is miaowing only to your face. They are in fact in a great game of hunt. At your households, most of the Sri Lankan houses are having good gardens and smaller forest patches. These types of habitat provide suitable environments for most of the native species including birds, reptiles,
mammals, etc. these animals play a major roll in controlling many disease-carrying organisms.
The top predators in these habitats are mostly raptors(eagles or kites), or reptiles and sometimes mammals. What happens is, when you are having a pet who is well-adapted in hunting is it directly or indirectly damage your currently balanced household habitat. Yeah, you may think that in the wild also they are the same as here, but, in the wild, they have their own intraspecific pressure. In a survey done in the UK, there are approximately 229cats per square Km. by which one cat kills approximately 29 prey annually(BAKER, BENTLEY et al. 2005). See how much of native birds, reptilians and mammals were killed, you think that you are providing foods and it may not want to go on the hunt, but how should it cease its evolutionary habits.
when You are proving foods for them they are being nourished in the number of individuals for an area. This reduces their intraspecific competition as they know some people are going to care for them.
I know we all are animal lovers but we don’t need to be interfering in their natural way of living.
If you want to have a pet keep it but knowing the facts that are happening out there. those impacts on the household environments indirectly affect you. Make sure that your cat is not on the hunt. Hang a bell on its neck which alarmed the prey, thereby you can minimize the effects.
BAKER, P. J., et al. (2005). “Impact of predation by domestic cats Felis catus in an urban area.” 35(3‐4):
302-312.
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