Although it looks a lot like a house cat, this feline is
actually an elusive Bolivian species called the oncilla. This
photo, which just won BBC Wildlife’s camera-trap photo
competition, was taken in Madidi National Park and was the first
documentation of the cat’s presence here. Capturing it on film
brings the park’s confirmed cat species to six. What’s the News:
After tracking baby gray catbirds with miniature radio
transmitters, biologists found that cats were by far the #1 bird
killer: 47 percent of the birds died at the paws of pet and
feral felines (out of 80 percent that were killed by predators
in general). This echoes some biologists’ view that cats are a
destructive, human-assisted invasive species: “Cats are way up
there in terms of threats to birds — they are a formidable force
in driving out native species,” said one of the authors of the
study. What’s the Context: Not So Fast: While cats were the
biggest threat to birds in this study, the lead author notes
that the biggest culprit for bird death