> Number of birds killed/year in the USA by cats: 3 700 000 000
If there are 74MM cats[1] in the United States, that figures out to about 50 birds per cat every year. Seems high to me.
BUT, if you add in the 50MM feral cats[2] as well, then the per-cat number is 30. Still seems high, but would make more sense if feral cats are disproportionately doing the killing (e.g. if feral cats kill 60 birds per year, and domestic cats kill 9)
The source for 3.7B[3] seems to actually be a range (1.4 - 3.7), and also estimates a cat population somewhere between 114MM and 164MM.
And at the end of all this verification, your point still stands, and it's still four orders of magnitude more. It also makes me happy that my past cats didn't decide to make a "present" out of every single kill.
Still a dumb FUD, too say windmills are killing birds?
What about these monstrounous Buildings with lots of Windows?
I mean some buildings gets some pictures at their windows so that birds think that there are bigger birds which could kill them, so they don't fly near that.
Still lots of birds die at those windows.
If there are 74MM cats[1] in the United States, that figures out to about 50 birds per cat every year. Seems high to me.
BUT, if you add in the 50MM feral cats[2] as well, then the per-cat number is 30. Still seems high, but would make more sense if feral cats are disproportionately doing the killing (e.g. if feral cats kill 60 birds per year, and domestic cats kill 9)
The source for 3.7B[3] seems to actually be a range (1.4 - 3.7), and also estimates a cat population somewhere between 114MM and 164MM.
And at the end of all this verification, your point still stands, and it's still four orders of magnitude more. It also makes me happy that my past cats didn't decide to make a "present" out of every single kill.
[1] https://www.avma.org/KB/Resources/Statistics/Pages/Market-re...
[2] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/6/us-is-overru...
[3] http://phys.org/news/2013-01-cats-billions-birds-mammals.htm...