Free-roaming cats are considered amongst the worst invasive species in the world. Given their widespread introduction our goal was to conduct a global assessment of species depredated and scavenged by cats and found cat diet. Specifically, we quantified diets of domestic cats throughout the world, described the diet taxonomically, by conservation status, and location.
Results/Conclusions
Globally, cat diet contained 1,685 unique species, of which 285 (17%) were of conservation concern under IUCN. Birds and mammals constituted the majority (70%) of the diet, with reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates representing smaller portions of the diet. Several human commensal species, such as house mouse and European rat, were found most often across studies. Most species consumed were less than 5 kg in size, though larger species were found in the diet that likely were juveniles or scavenged adults. Geographically studies were unequally represented with locations such as Australia comprising large numbers of studies compared to South America where few studies were conducted. Species accumulation curves indicated that our results do not reach an asymptote, indicating that additional studies and locations continue to provide new species. Our results triple previous estimates of species found in cat diets and species accumulation curves suggest that the current estimate may be conservative. Our findings are particularly relevant for conservation by further refining the degree to which cats act as invasive generalist predators.