House cats are an absolute ecological nightmare, implicated in the extinction of dozens of species, and posing a grave threat to many more….They’re only follow[ing] their predatory instincts; ultimately the fault is with you. Your love of felines opens the door for these hypercarnivores to invade new environments and catch unsuspecting creatures unaware.

After analyzing 15,000-year-old fossil records, a group of evolutionary biologists calculated the size of prehistoric carnivores and herbivores and concluded that huge "hypercarnivores" could have hunted massive mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths — curbing any potential overconsumption of plant life.

Analysis of the fossil indicates it has distinctly “hypercarnivorous” teeth, which means it evolved to be highly predatory rather than a more generalist meat-eater who might also have munched on vegetation… Hypercarnivores — such as polar bears, gray wolves and Arctic foxes — are typical predators in the Arctic, where there are few non-animal food sources, especially during winter.

In North America, cursorial hypercarnivores were lacking, while such species were present in the European faunas.