A former Smithsonian scientist was found guilty of attempted animal cruelty on Monday for near her home in Washington, D.C. Security camera footage caught Nico Dauphine, a one-time migratory bird researcher at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, sprinkling rat poison on food for alley cats placed outside an apartment building. According to prosecutors, Dauphine, who resigned from her post the day of her conviction, tried to kill the animals because she believed they were harming migratory bird populations. In 2009, Dauphine coauthored a paper estimating that cats “kill at least 1 billion birds every year in the United States.”
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