Don’t let their fluff idiot you: Your cat was constructed for homicide. Felines, regardless of how chonky, eepy, or boopable, are remarkably adaptable obligate carnivores, all the way down to eat absolutely anything that matches of their mouth.

Well-intentioned (or … threatening?) presents of lifeless birds, rats, and lizards are acquainted to out of doors cat homeowners—even my shockingly uncoordinated indoor cat has killed a spider or two in her day. But an evaluation printed today in Nature Communications, led by Auburn University ecologist Christopher Lepczyk, reveals that there’s shockingly little that cats don’t eat.

Compiling proof from a century of analysis from throughout the globe, Lepczyk’s group recognized over 2,000 animal species eaten by cats—and that’s solely what scientists have recorded up to now. Of these species, 347 are vulnerable to extinction, and 11 have since been listed as extinct within the wild (or for good). Scientists have recognized for ages that feline predation is an ecological nightmare, however “it’s a challenging problem that we still have yet to deal with,” says Peter Marra, dean of the Earth Commons Institute and biology professor at Georgetown University, who was not concerned on this research.

My cat slept by means of Marra’s video name, barely out of body, blissfully blind to the ecological harm she brought about in her wayward youth. She’s a candy, excellent angel child, and plenty of doting cat mother and father really feel the identical about their very own kitties. Could the answer to this environmental drawback … actually be to eliminate them? “Cats are embedded in our culture,” Marra continues. “It gets confusing when we start to talk about taking one life to save another.”

Since they have been domesticated in the Middle East practically 10,000 years in the past, cats have traveled just about in every single place people have. To thrive in so many various environments, felines grew to become opportunists. While some animals, like pandas and koalas, persist with a restricted menu of particular meals, “cats are not diet specialists,” says Marra. “They’re just trying to make ends meet.”

Lepczyk has spent the final 20 years compiling proof of what cats eat—first as a curiosity-driven aspect mission, then as a full-blown scientific endeavor. Hundreds of peer-reviewed journal papers, doctoral dissertations, authorities experiences, and journal articles over the previous century comprise experiences of cat diets all over the world, however till now, the knowledge had by no means been absolutely synthesized and laid out. So his group, comprising researchers from North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, pulled each report of cats consuming issues they might discover, and added every species listed as cat meals to a database. “It’s not rocket science that we’re doing here,” Lepczyk says. “But it was needed.” Finding out precisely what animals are affected by cats will inform future conservation and coverage, hopefully protecting each at-risk species and loving pet homeowners completely satisfied.