A Single Male Cat’s Reign of Terror | Hacker News Reader

A Single Male Cat’s Reign of Terror

theatlantic.com

47 pointspseudolus49 comments

> they ate just 83 percent of what they killed

Oddly, the abstract linked from that quote doesn't say that, but says:

> Eighty-three percent of kills occurred between dusk and dawn.

Though it wouldn't be surprising if they didn't fully consume every kill. Sometimes I don't clean my plate at restaurants, either.

Was gonna say, 83 percent sounds better than humans.

Found it in the Results section:

> On average, 83% of captures were consumed by the cats (88% of invertebrates, 79% of reptiles and amphibians, 78% of mammals and 50% of birds) and the remaining items were left at the site of predation.

Right. Feathers and bones don't digest well.

I think they meant the cat left 50% of birds completely alone. Not that they ate 50% of the mass of every bird. This is based on owning an outdoor cat and having it bring intact corpse trophies to the door.

Most times I've seen mammals eating other mammals, they consistently leave behind what looks like the stomach and maybe some guts. Often it's very cleanly removed, and piled with other inedible bits like tails and paws

> Cats have been a driving factor in the extinction of most of the 34 mammals that have gone extinct in Australia

I wonder, how many mammals have gone extinct due to humans being the biggest driving factor? A quick search turns up:

"[Australia lost] 50 animal and 60 plant species in the past 200 years [with] the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world over that period" [0]

According to the same article, main pressures faced by native plants and animals are:

- Habitat loss and degradation

- Climate change

- Land use practices

- Invasive plant and animal species

I suppose the "trapping, shooting, and even dropping poisoned sausages" to kill feral cats are aiming to address this last point.

As a cat lover, it hurts to hear this - but I also understand that 2 million feral cats can ravage the local ecology..

---

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/13/a-nation...

This article reads like a hit propaganda piece to eradicate cats that paints the feline as the villain.

Australia has been on cat-killing binge lately, and writing like that aims to justify it.[1]

In reality, the undisputed #1 threat to all wildlife is human activity — in particular, loss of habitat due to construction.

Now, wildlife activists have reasons to be pissed. But it's way easier to kill a million cats (yes, literally) than to maybe rethink construction.

So guess which is done.

This also applies to Bay Area, where Google forced a volunteer-run TNR program, gCat rescue, to shut down, ostensibly to help burrowing owls[2]. #1 reason for owls' decline? Loss of habitat.[3] Google's next step? Massive construction.[4]

And while the volunteer-run gCat was criticized in NYT as a threat to the owls, it's all crickets when it comes to construction.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/magazine/australia-cat-ki...

[2]https://www.paloaltohumane.org/facebook/tell-the-mountain-vi...

Also, don't ask me how stopping neutering cats helps the birds.

[3]http://burrowingowlconservation.org/burrowing_owl_facts/

[4]https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/06/google-affordable-hou...

I'm honestly surprised it took a stakeout to make the connection. They even mention seeing the cat in there previously, even eating something.

Kinda odd how the article mentions'Trap Neuter Return' controversy in the USA in an article about Australia. Is TNR a thing in Australia? The article doesn't say.

In some places it's 'no big deal' if cats kill birds (sorry bird fans) but in places where feral cats would interact with threatened native species (ie. Australia/NZ) that's obviously a different story.

I was surprised last time I was in hyper bird protective NZ to see a big fat cat lounging in the sun outside, while dogs are banned in so many places there due to fears of their interactions with flightless birds.

Hmm, maybe one of Tibbles' relatives?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall%27s_wren

I would support a ban against keeping cats as pets in Australia (and eventually their complete eradication from the continent).

I don't think I am about to get my way anytime soon though so I applaud those people with pet cats who keep them inside 100% of the time. I also applaud cat microchipping and registration controls that are increasingly being rolled out and enforced.

100% inside is not great description. Contained is better. I've got a secured garden that the cats can go to, but can't get out of. I've never seen a bird killed there (compared to >1 a month with unrestricted cats).

Anyway, my point is that we're likely after contained cats than inside cats. It gives them more fun and makes the house cleaner as well.

Can we just eradicate all foreign comers in the last 200 years from Australia? Perhaps one of the worst losses in Australia has been the near extermination of the native human population by a vigorously violent outside group of humans (who also were the ones that brought along the cats).

Note: this comes from an animal lover (and sure, I have a soft spot for cats) who finds flippant regards like "their complete eradication from the continent".

Nothing should ever be considered for eradication. The lazy solution is to eradicate. The hard solution is to "empathize" (i.e. study the 'problematic' component within a complex system) and figure out how to create a new space for it within the system/reconfigure the system around it.

Cats once had a function in pest control. These days, we're keeping cats solely for our pleasure. We can be the ones to not keep them anymore.

I find that people who lock cats inside don't empathize with them much. And those who let them roam don't empathize much with wildlife. The best system may be the one where cats are not considered pets anymore.

Don’t people still keep cats for pest control? They’re really good at it.

It is rarely a consideration.

Well, it depends on where you live.

In the country having a few cats means no mice, no rats, no snakes around the house.

You must not live in a place with a lot of rodents. Cats are regularly employed to help keep them out of your house. This goes for the city and country. Cats are super useful in New York for instance.

Small farms that keep grain-fed livestock absolutely do.

You could say the same for dogs though right?

Absolutely. Using dogs for hunting is considered barbaric these days.

Dogs are still very useful as home protection.

How was the solution not to trap the cat? Or shoot it? I realize its distasteful, but natures red in tooth and claw?

After careful consideration, the decision of the committee is that the cat should be downvoted.

It was eventually caught and euthanized.

My two cats live indoors. It's safer for them and better for everything outside — win-win!

a few observations - the cat went for easy prey, ie. land based birds. The people could have started feeding that cat, and that would have probably decreased his hunting drive. The people staking out there may have probably added to the distress of the colony of the birds who seems to not be a big fan of people. City limit of 2 cats seems to be typical bureaucrat knee jerk reaction - after all one specific cat was supposedly enough to drive the colony away, so why 2? not 1, 0, 3, 4? or why the limit at all?

Cats will hunt even when well fed.

Or even hunt more, because they have energy to burn for recreation.

I seem to recall some study in England finding this ...

Source?

Basic knowledge of cats, most likely. A high number of outdoor cats I've known would hunt animals and bring the complete flailing bodies or corpses indoors. It's just an understood part of cats, kind of like how humans will do things even though it isn't necessary for survival.

Search for "prey drive".

"Turner, D. C. 2000. The domestic cat: the biology of its behaviour. Second edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom."

Not sure why bird lives > cat lives. NB: The city has decided to kill the cat: https://www.mandurahmail.com.au/story/6290650/mandurah-counc...

More accurately, an entire bird colony > a single cat.

it's easy to see how species go extinct

> Domestic cats are responsible for the extinction of numerous mammals, reptiles, and at least 33 bird species globally.8 A study published in 2013 estimated between 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals are killed annually in the U.S. by feral and free ranging domestic cats, making them the largest human-influenced source of mortality for birds and mammals in the country.

If I understand the article correctly, house cats are considered an invasive species in Australia.

In Australia the well being of native species > well being of introduced species (aka feral pests). That's why, for example, there was so much controversy over brumbies population management [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zArrMjNp1Hw

Continued existence of native species > well being of introduced species.

Exactly, we already had a hefty share of extinctions [1], many of those due to introduced pests

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_animals_of_Aus...

(Edited for clarity: obviously not all of those animals in the linked list became extinct exclusively because of introduced species)

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