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Cats kill a staggering number of species across the world

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Cats kill a staggering number of species across the world

#91

Post by mattmaroon »

mattmaroon wrote: post #90
greazy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me what propaganda? This is informed opinion.

Yes, people whose opinions are formed by propaganda still think their opinions are informed. And they are. By propaganda. Something does not have to be untrue to be propaganda. There’s quite a bit of anti-pet propaganda put out ironically by two groups that have diametrically opposed viewpoints: ones that love animals and ones that hate them. But that’s not what I was referring to mostly. There’s also a lot of enviro…

Side note: I do agree that breeding dogs should be regulated due to animal neglect/abuse so much so that I’ve actually started the process of creating a not for profit to do a ballot initiative in my state to create a regulatory agency. I have worked with animal adoption agencies and no-kill shelters and my state has a horrible puppy mill problem. I am unfortunately very aware of the state of the breeder dogs that come from those.

I will put that stuff out of business or die trying.

Re: Cats kill a staggering number of species across the world

#92

Post by shiroiuma »

doug5446 wrote: post #82
nerdponx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a testable hypothesis. Neighborhoods with more outdoor pet cats should have fewer rodent problems in homes.

We had a cat that would regularly leave on our doorstep all types of dead bodies: birds, rats, mice, moles. Mainly mice and rates. It got to the point where we re-homed him to a farm that needed a mouser. About two weeks after we re-homed him we noticed pest control vans outside of three of the homes on our street. We talked to the neighbors and they were now seeing mice and rats and needed to get them removed.

I wonder if there's some way of training a cat like that to avoid birds and only hunt rodents.

Re: Cats kill a staggering number of species across the world

#93

Post by shiroiuma »

eddiewithzato wrote: post #27
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that while wild and vicious, cheetahs and anything smaller doesn't try to attack / eat people.

Adult people, cheetahs will eat kids

For some kids, this might not be a bad thing...

Re: Cats kill a staggering number of species across the world

#94

Post by logifail »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #63
knodi123 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mandatory spay/neuter with steep/progressive fines, plus ban free-roaming cats? that's a lot more achievable, and nearly as good.

Yep, although I don't think bans on outside cats are a good idea for several reasons. The key issue is controlling feral populations in a cultural context where large-scale hunting programs would never be tolerated by the public for obvious reasons. To do this we need to a) control the supply of fertile human-bred cats into the feral population and b) remove and neuter extant feral cats from the environment. We can a…

> And it's obvious that a feral cat kills orders of magnitude more wildlife than an outside cat with a cat flap and consistent access to food

(Genuine question) source?

My impression from our neighbourhood is that outside cats - who also come and sit in our garden - are interested in birds because that's part of who they are, not just because they are hungry.

Re: Cats kill a staggering number of species across the world

#95

Post by defrost »

ProxCoques wrote: post #86

My aunt and uncle are ornithologists. They observe feral cats as often the number one threat to native species populations in some areas, and have been instrumental in efforts to remove feral cats from Gran Canaria and other islands. https://brb.sprep.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/A_Review_o...

I imagine they'd like a few of these:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-29/feral-cat-management-...

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/felixer,-the-grooming-trap,-...

Cat specific, with photographic record of every animal targeted to verify working as expected.

Re: Cats kill a staggering number of species across the world

#96

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

logifail wrote: post #94
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, although I don't think bans on outside cats are a good idea for several reasons. The key issue is controlling feral populations in a cultural context where large-scale hunting programs would never be tolerated by the public for obvious reasons. To do this we need to a) control the supply of fertile human-bred cats into the feral population and b) remove and neuter extant feral cats from the environment. We can a…

> And it's obvious that a feral cat kills orders of magnitude more wildlife than an outside cat with a cat flap and consistent access to food (Genuine question) source? My impression from our neighbourhood is that outside cats - who also come and sit in our garden - are interested in birds because that's part of who they are, not just because they are hungry.

Tame outside cats certainly still hunt, but it's really only a hobby. Feral cats hunt for survival. N=1 here, but in about 3 years of ownership my (formerly feral) cat has killed maybe 10 house/forest mice, 2 squirrels, and 1 small bird(he presents all his prey to me, and I keep a rough count to monitor his behaviour), and most of that was before he got a flap 2 years ago. Obviously a feral cat would need to kill a lot more than that just to survive. And he's a large Norwegian forest cat living on the edge of a forest. He could go on an absolute spree if he wanted to.

I think he hunted considerably more before the flap because it was often hard to tell for me he wanted to come inside. So he'd get stuck outside for longer and get hungry/bored.

If you want some hard data, this seems like a good starting point: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

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