Cats Are Killing Eighty-Six Species of Bats Worldwide and Nobody Is Paying Attention
When people talk about cats destroying wildlife, they talk about birds. Always birds. Occasionally lizards. Almost never bats.
Meanwhile, cats are preying on 86 bat species across the globe, and roughly a quarter of those species are Near Threatened or Threatened according to the IUCN Red List. A comprehensive 2021 review by Oedin and colleagues documented the full scope of the slaughter. And the conservation world is barely acknowledging it.
The Scale of the Problem
Bat Conservation International published a detailed breakdown of why cats and bats don't mix. The numbers are staggering.
In the UK alone, an estimated 250,000 bats are killed by cats every year. At wildlife rehabilitation centers, cat attacks account for up to 89% of bat injuries. Yet only 18 of the 86 affected bat species have cats listed as a threat in their IUCN Red List assessments. Massive underreporting across the board.
Cats hunt bats in a specific, efficient way. In Jamaica's Stony Hill Cave, cats position themselves at cave entrances and snatch bats out of the air as they emerge at dusk. The Jamaican greater funnel-eared bat has roughly 250 individuals remaining. Cats sit at their front door every single evening.
In 2022, Bat Conservation International purchased land around the cave and installed predator-exclusion fencing. That is how desperate the situation is — buying real estate to keep cats away from 250 bats.
In New Caledonia, analysis of feral cat scat revealed remains of three large flying fox species plus smaller fruit bats. In New Zealand, a single feral cat killed 107 short-tailed bats in one week.
When Bats Disappear, Babies Die
This is not hyperbole. A 2024 study published in Science tracked what happened in US counties where bat populations collapsed due to white-nose syndrome.
When bats declined, farmers increased insecticide use by 31.1%. That insecticide exposure was associated with a 7.9% increase in infant mortality in affected counties. The researchers estimated 1,334 additional infant deaths between 2006 and 2017.
Bats eat enormous quantities of agricultural pests. When bats vanish, farmers spray more poison. That poison drifts into water supplies, into air, into food. Infants absorb it.
Why Bats Matter More Than You Think
Bats pollinate over 500 plant species. They disperse seeds for tropical forests. They consume mosquitoes and agricultural pests at industrial scale. A single colony of Mexican free-tailed bats in Texas eats 250 tons of insects per night.
Cats preying on bats creates a cascade: fewer bats means more insects, more insects means more pesticide, more pesticide means contaminated water and dead infants. The domestic cat sitting on your neighbor's porch is one link in a chain that ends with a baby in a NICU.
Eighty-six species. A quarter of them already threatened. And the global conservation community can barely bring itself to name the predator responsible because it purrs.