{"id":71878,"date":"2018-09-12T14:13:46","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T19:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=71878"},"modified":"2018-09-13T13:57:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T18:57:42","slug":"feral-cats-hunting-down-lizards-in-the-yucatan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/feral-cats-hunting-down-lizards-in-the-yucatan\/","title":{"rendered":"Feral cats hunting down lizards in the Yucatan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tiffany Chen <\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

Quintana Roo, Mexico \u2013 The lush forests, cobalt\u00a0 blue waters and and rich biodiversity leaves the tourists in awe in the Yucatan Peninsula. Yet, over the past 20 years, locals and tourists at the coastal town\u00a0 of Akumal noticed a drop in the population of lizards. And stray cats are to blame.<\/p>\n

Something rattled in the bush. A cat with a grey-speckled coat gazed intensely into the green. Tip-toeing towards a tropical bush, the cat lowered its shoulder-blade making its belly closer to the floor. It stopped. It pounced. And it turned towards me. There, a gecko- looking reptile, waved its limbs and squirmed between the cat\u2019s teeth. The cat held the amphibian hard enough so it couldn\u2019t escape and light enough, so the cat didn’t kill it. I thought I’d just witnessed a lion hunting an antelope in the safari. But for these cats, the hunt isn’t for food, necessarily. It’s for sport.<\/p>\n

Domestic cats are listed among the \u201c100 of the world\u2019s worst invasive alien species\u201d in many areas, according to the Invasive Species Specialist Group<\/a>. An estimated 1.4-3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals are killed annually in the U.S. by feral cats who have shed domestic life. These cats are posing threats to birds, amphibians and small mammals around the world.<\/p>\n