Cats are no match for New York City's rats (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Cats are no match for New York City's rats (2018)

theatlantic.com

28 pointsfortran7777 comments

Cats were traditionally used as mousers (as Larry the cat as the UK's Chief Mouser performs to this day at 10 Downing Street), but rats traditionally were handled by dogs, particularly terriers, who were bred originally to hunt rats and other vermin.

In any modern city there is food enough for a feral cat not need to hunt mouses. Even when they hunt birds, is more for the play aspects, the thrill, than to feed themselves.

If we want to control rats in our cities, we need to deal with the issue of rampant food waste.

Maybe selective breeding can work. Create cats with high prey drive, who are stronger and fiercer and still tame.

Evolution made NYC rats big, one can do it artificially for cats.

I suspect the feral cat gene pool is constantly sabotaged by the human-directed elimination of any cat that is not soft, friendly, and cuddly.

Human-directed breeding also plays a huge role.

Feral cats will almost never beat wild rats.

Oh as a business or endeavor these cats will be sterile and used as tools. They won't be used to change the population of feral cats

You are correct. That is one more reason natural selection favors rats that eat cats over cats that eat rats in the long term.

You're trolling. But this is doable bro. We artificially select dogs for reproduction to create different phenotypes (aka breeds). Certainly we can do this for cats. Specifically breed cats that have high rat kill counts. This is similar to greyhounds where dogs are bred for pure speed.

The goal isn't to change the population of cats but to use the cats the same way we use certain dog breeds for herding.

No, I'm not trolling.

Where I live we put down cats that attack people. We onyl breed the mroe loving, least aressive cats. They will get softer, cuddlier, and less agressive over time.

It doesn't matter, as long as there is waste food, any hunter will go the path of least effort and energy once they figure out they can get a free meal out of a trash can.

Case in point: Bears. The dictionary definition of an Apex Predator, and yet, once they figure out that trash cans are an all you can eat buffet, it is all downhill from there.

This is anectodal but I am Turkish and we have tons of cats roaming the city streets. Anyone visited Istanbul can vouch for it.

There are no rats hanging around. I am 39 years old, living in Ankara (capital city) and never once seen a rodent within the city. I don’t know if it is something else entirely but I believe cats have something to do with it.

Others appear to agree with your sentiment: https://www.reddit.com/r/istanbul/comments/10sia4d/rats_in_i...

I did some quick searches and nothing shows concretely that this is due to the high cat population, only anecdotally. Regardless, it's certainly a thing.

https://turkeynomad.com/posts/why-cats-istanbul

The title gives the impression that cats got into a losing fight with rats, but the article makes clear that is not the case. The cats just rarely bother with the rats, having plenty other, lazier, food options.

That is not accurate. Rats are much bigger and more dangerous.

“Not bother” is misleading. Cats are not able to reliably hunt rats and are at risk of being injured

I get it.

I am much bigger and stronger than a cat and lost my only fight with a rat. They bite HARD!

You'd lose a fight with a cat just the same. I've seen a very beefy adult man utterly filleted by an angry cat. And it wasn't even a particularly big cat, it just didn't feel like being evicted from the barn that it had been living in. I've rarely seen that much blood on a human being and the fight didn't last for more than 10 seconds.

I was hospitalised for two days because of a cat bite and when talking to a nurse was told that she had treated someone who lost a leg!

I totally believe it. At first I thought the guy had had a really bad car accident.

I should point out that my situation (and the lady who lost her leg) were caused by infections from cat bites - which I now know to be potentially rather serious if left untreated.

I assumed that was the case, not that a cat had amputated a leg :)

I doubt any non-impaired person will seriously lose to a cat. All these stories are people LATER having some kind of infection. Sure, you have a chance at serious damage due to infection. But a cat just killing a person in a 1v1 deathmatch? I very much doubt that.

says someone that's never been in a fight with a cat

My assumption is that people in fights with cats are woefully unprepared and/or not wanting to seriously injure the cat.

They probably haven't a clue how ferocious a cat really is as well as how incredibly strong a cat hopped up on adrenaline is. My own most impressive encounter with a cat was one that had to go to the vet and wouldn't go into the transport carrier. I finally managed to get it in and it simply shredded it's way out the bottom leaving me looking pretty silly with an empty carrier in my hand and a very much pissed off cat sitting in its accustomed spot on the window sill. I didn't go for a second try and told my aunt (whose cat it was) that maybe the cat wasn't going to go to the vet that day after all and whether she would consider asking them for a house call.

The carrier was well beyond repair. It was some kind of tick nylon weave and I'm pretty sure it would have been hard to cut with scissors.

Nice assumption. I have been in a fight with a cat. The only reason it's not dead is because you don't seriously fight with a cat. You just defend and get the cat or yourself out of the situation. I had a ton of superficial cuts with a lot of blood but it was all superficial. They can only seriously damage the eyes. I just went to the doctor got a rabies shot with like 3 follow ups, some medication and an ointment and that was it.

You went to the doctor more times for a fight with a cat than I've gone in the past 10 years. And you still think a fight with a cat isn't serious?

You are putting words in my mouth. I did not say it's not serious. Any fight with an animal is serious due to infection risk. This is what I said:

> I doubt any non-impaired person will seriously lose to a cat. All these stories are people LATER having some kind of infection. Sure, you have a chance at serious damage due to infection. But a cat just killing a person in a 1v1 deathmatch? I very much doubt that.

You don't have to be dead to have lost a fight with a cat. Who's moving the goal posts. You're trying to make it sound like a fight with a cat is a nothing burger, and you're just trolling at this point.

Sounds to me like you lost a fight with a cat but you have a hard time admitting it.

You think this is a good way to communicate with someone? It's fine to disagree with me but you are just poisoning any reasonable discussion at this point.

You are not engaging in a reasonable discussion.

Everyone of your comments have been combative, and have a totally different concept about what it means to lose a fight. You had multiple visits to a doctor after a confrontation, and still don’t think you lost, as your comments suggest. We clearly have differing ideas of what losing a fight means. You seem to not be able to accept that. It seems to me as you’re the one that has been poisoning the thread.

I never said I lost or not, the fight was undecided since it was broken up... You time and time again read things into my comments I haven't said. I said I don't think a person will lose in a serious(Which I take to mean a fight until one party is physically unable to continue, death or knockout) 1v1 fight with a cat, nothing more, nothing less. Please quote the comments where I "have different concepts what it means to lose a fight" in every one of my comments.

In fact I just read back the entire thread. None of my comments are aggressive. You were the one who came out of the woodworks swinging with your: "says someone that's never been in a fight with a cat" comment.

Anyway I'm done with this topic. Apparently whether a cat can defeat a human is too serious a topic for two people on this site to be able to discuss it in a civil manner.

> I doubt any non-impaired person will seriously lose to a cat.

Cat bites are extremely nasty, cat nails should be classified as concealed weapons. Until you've seen what a mad cat can do to a human being I think you should simply reserve judgment. The guy I'm talking about was about as 'non-impaired' as it gets and the cat came off without a scratch. For the guy it was a hospital visit, multiple stitches and antibiotics. I'm also fairly sure he gained a healthy respect for cats.

Dog bites happen more frequently and can easily be fatal. But cat bites, and scratches even if they aren't fatal can cause really bad infections. Cats can shred you pretty badly, enough to get you to consider leaving the cat alone or finding some other way to get it to do what you want it to do other than main force.

If a cat attacks you make sure you protect your face and treat bites and scratches immediately with a strong anti-septic and if anything happens to the wounds that you don't trust visit a doctor.

I have been looking online to search for a number on how many people where killed by a cat, excluding the obvious infection risk. I literally cannot find a number. Most likely because either it's so vanishingly small no one cares to track it. Or because it's 0. Show me a few cases of a cat killing a person in a fight and I will reconsider my stance.

I have been in a fight with a cat. There is a lot of blood. But there is little serious damage. Unless you are extremely unlucky with the cat going for your eye there is little to be really concerned about.

Why is there the unrealistic belief in this thread that to lose to a cat means you're dead?

"lose" doesn't mean "die', that was your addition. And that's fine, but it's a nonsense argument, not everybody that ever lost a fight died.

In a fight with an animal what other definition of lose would you use? I use death because it's easily quantifiable and works for dogs.

More injured than the animal (in a lot of cases the animal will end up with no injury at all, because many human have poor fight instinct and might simply scream while flailing their arms around).

Or in case of territorial dispute, the animal ends up chasing you away. For instance, a friend was unable to get into her own apartment because a wild bat was guarding the door.

> I use death

That's your choice, but it was clear that that wasn't the definition that I was using, unless you were misreading my original comment when you first responded.

> I doubt any non-impaired person will seriously lose to a cat.

An unarmed, unprepared human will lose a fight with a mosquito. We carry no natural armour or weapons.

Give us a moment to prepare, and we become the most dangerous animal on earth. For a cat, a net and suitable clothing may do the trick.

How many people have you seen prepare for a fight with a cat? Come to that, how many cat's give people time to prepare?

The funny thing is that the guy from my original comment actually was prepared, he took the fight to the cat and lost in a pretty convincing way. I certainly came away impressed and even though I think your net would do the trick at some point (unless you plan on killing or knocking out the cat) you will have to remove it from the net.

Humans only lose these fights out of fear. The damage to you is superficial. One successful move from you can end the life of a rat or cat.

The animals that attack do so at great risk. The animals who run, which is what most animals do is the more logical and ,evolutionarily speaking, successful move.

But for what purpose?

With many feral/semi-feral cats it would be a pyrrhic victory.

How many times do you want to explain to people that you're blind in one eye because of a vicious barn cat?

Most animals run. If an animal attacks it's likely to be rabies.

Or just defending itself when the human is trying to trap it.

running is the best defense. You don't get it, if an animal kills a human it's hunted and put down. Natural selection has already done it's work so that most animals run.

There are pockets of the world where animals don't run. This is in remote places where humans rarely ever set foot. Islands and such.

One prominent example are penguins at the south pole. They don't run.

You're acting like we're all out on the Savanah hunting a wild predator animal.

Just trying collecting a cat to put in a carrier that's just not interested in that. The longer you try, the more upset it will get. It doesn't have to be a cat that doesn't know you.

If you corner it of course it has no choice. But in general it runs first before it attacks. Attacking is a move of last resort.

Have you ever actually interacted with a barn cat?

> The damage to you is superficial

A bite is not superficial and thus much more likely to lead to an infection, which in turn can finish you through septic shock.

It is not the cat I fear, but their microscopic allies.

Hmm. How common is this. Like out of 100 people who get bitten and no medical treatment what happens if they don't get medical treatment?

I'm guessing less than one person dies. And less than 1 gets sick.

Yes and no. We had a smallish (8lb) cat who brought us a dead rat every day for years. We had a graveyard with thousands of rat skulls. These were “normal” sized rats though (~0.5 lb), not enormous subway rats.

Our current (20lb) cat only hunts voles. Go figure.

at 20lbs, I'm surprised it can hunt anything other than the food dish

There are a few breeds where the males are massive muscular monsters, at 20-25 lbs.

when someone has a mane coon, they usually tell you that bit of info. it's like crossfit, when you have a mane coon, you must talk about mane coon.

He’s a rescue, so who knows, but he’s definitely maine coon adjacent.

https://archive.is/8kgll

Feral cats are very similar to rats. They eat garbage, spread disease and destroy wildlife.

But they don't invade your home.

They sure poop next to it for sure though

They train mink to kill rats shown here[1], but the NY rats may be a larger variety.

[1] https://youtu.be/48dlAlrGNj8

what New York needs is a few dozen Patterdales[1]...

[1] https://preview.redd.it/meet-billy-the-8-y-o-patterdale-terr...

How about transplanting some badgers or wolverines? Yea. Into Manhattan. Just an idea.

Time to upgrade to tigers.

Yes and rats eat kittens.

ok, what is the optimal predator for rats?

Humans

Probably raptors and owls. But the problem, for any predator, is that rats live within buildings and the city's subterranean.

Rat Terriers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Terrier

dogs tend to need a lot of looking after, though, unless they become a problem. cats not so much.

those do like nice doggies, though.

They don't need looking after more or less than cats and rats.

DC has been experimenting with these. It requires a lot more human labor to manage them, but holy smokes are they effective.

Small dogs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrier

In spaces tighter than a terrier, mink.

Well, ferrets were used historically, eg see "Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-Catcher, after 25 Years’ Experience" by Ike Matthews (1898) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17243/17243-h/17243-h.htm

Dwarves

Chicago has an estimated 4000 coyotes living in the urban area. I would occasionally see them in parks and graveyards when I was out walking at dawn, but otherwise they are almost invisible. Rodents, including rats, make up about 75% of a coyote's diet and a single coyote can eat about 1800 per year. They are a welcome predator in the city as they keep a very low profile and keep to themselves, except for the rare instance where they make the news, like when one visited a Quiznos and took a nap in the beverage cooler.

1. https://www.wistv.com/story/6324187/coyote-stops-by-chicago-...

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