Hacker News Reader

Comment by enlyth | Hacker News Reader

There seem to be large cultural differences and they have their reasons.

For one, the average area of a house in the USA seems to be above 2000 square feet, whereas here in the UK it's more like 750 or so.

It feels worse for the animal to be cramped in a tiny space all their life, so we let them outside. Also there are no predators apart from the occasional domesticated dog, so it's safer. The biggest risk is traffic, which is dependent on where you live.

The bird thing brought up every time is weird to me, because no one seems to care about birds until cats are part of the conversation, suddenly birds are the most important part of the ecosystem.

View on HN

We learn new things over time. Birds are wildly important to the world's ecosystems. House cats, not so much. They're more useful to humans in keeping rodents away from our food but that's not as necessary these days.

The supposed impact on bird life seems possibly quite overstated. Extensive personal experience suggests that (at least the cats that select me to live with) do not catch many birds at all.

Of the current cat with free-ish outdoor access: Last year birds accounted for 3.6 percent of all recorded catches (5/138). This year birds are 1.7 percent of all recorded catches (1/58). And all of the birds I've seen caught first knocked themselves out striking windows, or flew inside the house via open door and injured themselves trying to escape in panic. The healthy ones don't let cats near them at all.

Of the prior cat, zero birds over 9 years. Of the cat before that, maybe 1 or 2 birds over 18 years.

Of course anecdotes aren't data etc, but, the impact of data is its story, and anecdotes direct and constrain the collection and analysis of data.

how are you going to be like "my anecdote is actually important" with an N of magnitude 100. long-term and wide-scale research and monitoring has tracked millions of birds and have used models to extrapolate to the billions. your comment means little more than nothing. have you considered you haven't seen the extent of what the roaming cat has killed? it won't always bring it back to you. and why is it that the non-bird animals aren't important? biodiversity reduction, not just birds. and you think that even if they are sick or injured catches that your cat isn't impacting the other animals? you realize other animals gotta eat? if they can't b/c your cat takes it, or worst infects it with a parasite by chomping on it, your local predators are gonna suffer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com