Today no one would chose an introduced species like cats as an example of symbiosis. Outdoor cats are an invasive species which are destroying the native bird populations, and as a result the larger food chain. They are a huge problem for ecosystems.
Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
21–30 of 79 posts
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#22There's also the story of the man who decided the USA needed to have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, so he imported and released them, with similarly disastrous results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin#Starling_re...
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#23> For the next 250 years, despite the best efforts of the English to free themselves from this commercial yoke, the secret of that prodigious dye remained unknown to all but a select fortunate few of Spanish producers. But no production secret can stay that way forever, and so in the closing years of the eighteenth century, British spies succeeded in spiriting away the tightly kept formula: in order to obtain the lon…
I find it highly unlikely they couldn't solve this mystery for 250 years given that a similar insect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_cochineal was used for producing very similar dye in Central and Eastern Europe for centuries already at that point, and was one of the main exports of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (till the imported dye won over because of higher yields = cheaper price). To this point the mont…
It could be they knew it was an insect but couldn't discern which one. There are after all tens to hundreds of thousands of new world insect species.
It also could be a Gladwellian over fancification.
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#24There's also the story of the man who decided the USA needed to have all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, so he imported and released them, with similarly disastrous results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin#Starling_re...
It seems odd to recount a historical anecdote while simultenously linking to a source that casts considerable doubt over it.
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#25Today no one would chose an introduced species like cats as an example of symbiosis. Outdoor cats are an invasive species which are destroying the native bird populations, and as a result the larger food chain. They are a huge problem for ecosystems.
I’ve heard this many times but do not know enough to say how big of a problem it is ecologically.
I walk my cat on a leash (am on a walk now) and he is the first cat I’ve not allowed outside on his own.
Cat walking and the belief you’ve espoused is extremely decisive, but not for the reason you’ve said.
Letting your cat roam free is a tacit acknowledgment that one doesn’t really care that much for the animal, because they will make time to monitor it.
I’m certain it makes no sense that cats are allowed to roam free, no more than dogs.
But it has taken many years for me to get to this position.
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#26> There is a famous story along these lines told for the first time by the German biologists Ernst Haeckel and Carl Vogt. As the story goes, the fortunes of England would seem to depend on cats. By nourishing themselves on mice, cats increase the chances of survival of bumblebees, which, in turn, pollinate shamrocks, which then nourish the beef cows that provide the meat to nourish British sailors, thus permitting th…
And similarly:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#27>>"I am sure that many of the erudite readers of this little book know On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin inside and out. " I can't parse that sentence. Does it make sense? (English is not my first language)
Not a native speaker either but it seems like an acceptable sentence. Here is a slightly reworked version that might be easier to understand. The brackets mark where I added something or left something out: "I am sure that many [...] readers of this [...] book know [the book] 'On the Origin of Species' (by Charles Darwin) inside and out." Edit: "to know something inside and out" means to be very familiar with somethi…
The book is the book that the article is an excerpt from, not Darwin's.
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#28> If there is someone who still has this gap in their education, you are urged to fill it without any further delay.
Maybe Origin holds up better than I would guess but honestly, I'm never going to read that thing. You've got time to read a few thousand books in your life. And I would bet there are many modern books which cover the same material with a more accessible bent and more up to date and comprehensive information.
I'm not saying this as some kind of philistine. I studied literature for several years at university. I enjoy it. I've read Dante, Ovid, Thucidydes, Chaucer, Kant, and many more. But most those books are really interesting in historical or pedagogical kind of way. They show you the development of writing as it progressed. And they demonstrate the changing of human philosophy and epistemology. But frankly, most modern people can derive the same concepts and style as they've been handed down and filtered through subsequent authors.
Despite the hullabaloo about people declining to read, we live in an amazing literary time. Really good books are being written right now on just about every subject. The writing world is so competitive that authors really have to hone their skill. Especially in the non-fiction category which for several decades has been under a deluge of well researched, focused and didactic books.
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#29The prosaic reality is that bumblebees don't have any particular feelings about cats. Not more that they would feel about other carnivores. Using the same argument we could easily link being rich in England with the presence of rats in their house (that also eat lots of mice); or other similar nonsense. (But, yep. I agree that this old histories full of literary licenses feel warm inside and are entertaining as long…
I disagree, I have cat mint at my house and my cat would sleeps under the shade of the plant while at least a hundred bumble bees collect nector and pollen from the bright purple flowers. My cat eats insects like grasshoppers and moths but was not scared of the bees, or tried to catch any, and many landed on her. Sometimes nature is stranger than reality, cat mint has similar to properties to catnip.
The cats appear to understand the bumblebees, the bumblebees do not pay much attention to people or cats. The mint has direct relationships with both animals and insects. Unless of course if you start rooting around in their underground nests, at which point the will fly toward your head like a mimi drone and force you to stop with their persistent dive bombs. I've never been stung but they get aggressive when protecting brood.
This was at least a 3 way simbiotic relationship.
My cat passed away November 2019, mice live under the cat mint plant now.
I have kittens planned in preparation fo next year's gardening season.
Video is related (shut off audio, it's poor quality):
I can't explain the relationships but yet they still persist and can be witnessed in real time.
Re: Why bumblebees love cats and other beautiful relationships
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a native speaker either but it seems like an acceptable sentence. Here is a slightly reworked version that might be easier to understand. The brackets mark where I added something or left something out: "I am sure that many [...] readers of this [...] book know [the book] 'On the Origin of Species' (by Charles Darwin) inside and out." Edit: "to know something inside and out" means to be very familiar with somethi…
The book is the book that the article is an excerpt from, not Darwin's.
From my point of view this is still clear in the shortened sentence.