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Comment by nosianu | Hacker News Reader

> I still can't fathom why anyone thinks it's OK to leave cats outside to roam free.

See, I can't fathom the opposite. Cats belong outdoors. I will never have an indoor cat. Vote me down as much as you like, THAT is unnatural (I will also not have exoctic cats that could only live indoors).

The greatest danger to songbirds is human changes to the environment, not cats, by several orders of magnitude. Animals having predators is not exactly unnatural, to put it carefully.

Although I do wish we could create cats, by selection or some day by gene editing, that leave birds alone completely.

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>The greatest danger to songbirds is human changes to the environment, not cats, by several orders of magnitude. Animals having predators is not exactly unnatural, to put it carefully.

We aren't going to stop creating buildings with windows. Outside of that, the largest killer of birds is by cats, by a long shot. Which is literally 100% preventable. And no, humans are NOT an order of magnitude more than cats, not even close.

https://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mor...

Given all the many articles about the decline of many kinds of birds, your claim that cats are to blame is plain wrong. That was not the conclusion in any of those many articles that we could read right here on HN. Lack of environment and of food - insects is the usual culprit named in them.

Cats are one reason, but certainly not the dominating one. Neither would cats matter at all without the other reasons because there would be plenty of birds.

In this discussion I'll take the downvotes with pride, this is getting ridiculous.

You should read your sources more carefully. The article you posted explicitly makes the same argument as nosianu:

> First, it should be stated that the single most significant threat to bird populations is habitat destruction, in all of its forms and with all of its causes. The various causes of mortality outlined below kill individual birds directly, and can certainly have an adverse effect on population size, but can actually have a beneficial effect in some cases. Studies of hunting have documented that in certain cases killing small numbers of birds can improve the health and survival of the remaining birds. As long as the habitat is intact, the population has the potential to replace the lost birds.

Are pet cats not considered a human change to the environment? Feral cat colonies are an entirely different ecosystem than pet cats, from what I can gather.

Edit: Also, I can understand your sentiment for not wanting to have an indoor cat. It seems 'unnatural' to me too. I want to them to have as much freedom and joy as possible, but... I've also had outdoor cats that just get run over, so. I don't know what the right way is.

The "change to the environment" that has the biggest effect is habitat destruction. There are places, especially remote islands, where cats have had significant effects on the environment, but in most places predation of songbirds by cats is dwarfed by predation from other animals.

That seems like a reasonable explanation to me, but to just give a reference for my train of thought... I was thinking of Macquarie Island, which has a weird history of animal/pest control. Rodents were introduced to the island, then cats to help with the rodents... and then the cats wiped out the native seabird population.

Edit: Just realized I'm mentioning a small island, like you said, hehe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarie_Island#Ecological_ba...

Housecats being anywhere other than desert predators _is_ a human change to the environment. They were then introduced places other than Egypt and the levant because of how efficient they are at pest removal from grain stores. From a certain perspective they're as much farm equipment as the plow. If we had somehow lucked into say a armored hog that could be convinced to plow a field as it searched for truffles or something, we'd consider that an issue for them to free roam on every continent and decimate local wildlife.

feral hogs are a huge problem. They do decimate local wildlife.

Sure, I was just trying to tie it into more of analog of farm equipment gone awry than agricultural products.

You're totally right though.

> Animals having predators is not exactly unnatural, to put it carefully.

uh... but if those predators are bred by humans, it's unnatural

We do? I know of pup mills, I am unaware of cat mills. Maybe for exotic cats, but those would be the types people keep at home because they would not fare so well outside anyway.

And since when is one species doing something that benefits another unnatural? That exists among animals too.

hm I guess you're trying to make this into cat vs dog owners...

but it's about:

* properly keeping your pet from harm / harming others *

> And since when is one species doing something that benefits another unnatural?

well I guess humans interfering nature is "natural" after all... I mean, we're "part of nature"

Well, cats wouldn't be anywhere except for Africa and maybe eastern Europe if it wasn't for humans.

(Yes, I know wildcats exist, but their ranges and populations are limited)

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