Perhaps the most alarming headline announcing the findings of an Australian study last week was from Newsweek: “Cats Kill One Million Birds Per Day Pushing Many Species to the Point of Extinction.” In fact, the research itself makes no mention of extinctions. Indeed, as the researchers themselves explain in the paper’s abstract, “it remains challenging to interpret this mortality tally in terms of population viability or conservation concern for Australian birds.” [1]

Challenging, in part, because the mortalities attributed to cats* account for only “about 3.5% of Australia’s terrestrial bird population.”¹ Funny, there was no mention of this little detail in Newsweek piece—or in the phys.org article upon which it was apparently based.

Far more troubling, though, was its omission from the media release announcing the publication of the research. Read more