Population and community-level impacts of feral cats on native fauna have been little studied, but evidence from several studies indicates that direct predation is the most important process involved (reference). Nevertheless, a study was conducted on the stomach contents of 390 feral felines in central Australia, between 1990 and 1994, in the Northern Territory. Felines victualed on a variety of invertebrates, reptiles, birds and mammals, including animals up to their own body mass in size. Mammals were the most consequential prey but reptiles were customarily eaten in summer and birds were consequential in winter. Invertebrates were present in the diet of all seasons. Carrion appeared in stomach samples during dry winters only and this had
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Frequency of prey items is the number of stomachs containing each prey class expressed as a percentage of all stomachs. The mean body masses of prey species were obtained from sundry sources and used to calculate the biomass of prey classes in the diet of feral felines. Mean adult body masses of prey species were multiplied by the total number of occurrences of those species in the stomach contents to give an overall biomass contribution for each species or prey class. The mass contribution of plant material and scavenged aliment such as red kangaroo or garbage were not included in this analysis as it was infeasible to estimate the quantity of victuals ingested. This method gave maximum mass contribution for each prey group, as it postulates that entire animals were consumed. A quandary with this method of estimating the mass of prey eaten is that sizably voluminous animals such as rabbits may not be planarity ingested. However, the method is probably more reliable than weighing the contents of individual stomach samples when weight loss of prey through digestion is unknown. It was postulated that the sundry types of prey items would not have had a consequential difference retention times in the stomach, and that stomach contents at time of analysis were not partial towards less digestible prey
Frequency of prey items is the number of stomachs containing each prey class expressed as a percentage of all stomachs. The mean body masses of prey species were obtained from sundry sources and used to calculate the biomass of prey classes in the diet of feral felines. Mean adult body masses of prey species were multiplied by the total number of occurrences of those species in the stomach contents to give an overall biomass contribution for each species or prey class. The mass contribution of plant material and scavenged aliment such as red kangaroo or garbage were not included in this analysis as it was infeasible to estimate the quantity of victuals ingested. This method gave maximum mass contribution for each prey group, as it postulates that entire animals were consumed. A quandary with this method of estimating the mass of prey eaten is that sizably voluminous animals such as rabbits may not be planarity ingested. However, the method is probably more reliable than weighing the contents of individual stomach samples when weight loss of prey through digestion is unknown. It was postulated that the sundry types of prey items would not have had a consequential difference retention times in the stomach, and that stomach contents at time of analysis were not partial towards less digestible prey