Research overview: sublethal and landscape-of-fear effects of cats

Beyond animals killed directly, the mere presence of cats may harm wildlife through fear and disturbance. This overview surveys research on sublethal effects, including the idea that prey perceiving predation risk reduce foraging, alter behaviour and suffer lowered reproduction, a landscape of fear created by cats. It examines studies, such as experiments showing reduced provisioning and breeding success in birds exposed to cat models, and discusses how these indirect effects could compound direct mortality to depress wildlife populations more than kill counts alone suggest. The survey considers the difficulty of quantifying sublethal impacts and their controversy, framing them as an important but harder-to-measure dimension of how free-roaming cats affect wildlife, relevant to fully accounting for their ecological footprint.