I just asked my cat about this "cat gap" and he didn't have anything to say about it.
He's back to quietly snorring while sleeping on my couch, after his morning was filled with staring at birds outside, eating and taking a hell of a dump in his toilet.
Hard to believe he's got anything in common with the predators we are talking about here.
> some of the bloodthirstiest predators on the planet
Present company excluded, of course. A typical human "sports hunter" can easily kill a lot more than 200 animals. And if you count all the animals that die to feed us or are simply accidental casualties of our infrastructure and resource extraction... well, the mind boggles.
Animals who die to feed us aren't really relevant, are they? These 200-ish animals killed by housecats are on top of the food they're already receiving at home, which is made from slaughtered animals.
A sports hunter who doesn't eat their kills but only hunts for fun is an apt comparison, but do they really kill 200 animals per year? That's more than one every two days. Typically that would be a weekend hobby and even if they went hunting 52 weeks of the year that's almost 4 kills per hunting weekend. You really think that's plausible (or even legal, given restrictions on hunting)?
Yeah, but this behaviour is not really bred into cats the way we've bred behaviour into dogs. Cats and humans is more of a mutually beneficial arrangement where we get pest control and they get shelter and a steady food supply.
They kind of just moved in with us several thousand years ago and stuck around because it worked out well for them.
He's back to quietly snorring while sleeping on my couch, after his morning was filled with staring at birds outside, eating and taking a hell of a dump in his toilet.
Hard to believe he's got anything in common with the predators we are talking about here.