Wildlife

Can nonhuman animals drive other animals to extinction?

Imagine looking up at a sky so full of birds, they block out light from the sun. Passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) used to fly in flocks of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, of birds that took hours to pass overhead. Then, we started shooting them.

Humans began commercially hunting passenger pigeons in the 19th century, and by 1914, they were extinct, according to Audubon magazine. These birds are a prime example of how quickly and efficiently humans can wipe out even the most common species. But is it just us, or can nonhuman animals drive other animals to extinction?

Sort of, but humans are usually involved. Some animals are capable of interspecies decimation if humans put them in the wrong place and they become invasive — species that cause ecological or economic damage to their non-native environment.

For example, Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) from Asia are gobbling up anything that moves in the Florida Everglades. The domestic cat is another example. “They have contributed to the extinction of dozens of species of bird,” he said — the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli) in New Zealand, which went extinct in 1895, is one example. Cats are the leading direct human cause of bird mortality in the U.S. and Canada, according to the American Bird Conservancy. In other words, American birds are under greater threat from pet cats than from guns.

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