Secret life of the cat: What do our feline companions get up to? | Hacker News Reader

Secret life of the cat: What do our feline companions get up to?

bbc.co.uk

13 pointsDaniiltje8 comments

Unfortunately, one of their favorite activities while roaming around includes killing a large number of birds[1]. While some may scoff at that, birds (even the ones considered less desirable) contribute to lowering the populations of insect pests that would annoy us or eat our crops. China nearly wiped out the common house sparrow in the 1960s and it helped lead to The Great Famine[2] as the sparrows ate much more insects than they did grain. Many types of the less invasive bird species also do not reproduce nearly as fast or in abundance as their feline predators. So while cats might have a few litters or more each year, the birds they are killing might only have one successful clutch, if that. Unlike mammals, most bird species also need both parents to raise their young. If one is killed, the other will most likely abandon the nest.

Countries like New Zealand[3][4] have had to worry about the size of cat populations lately just to keep birds like the kiwi from being wiped out. New Zealand originally had no native mammals and the birds there have not yet built up a sense of fear to them (or even us) in many cases. Although cats are a guilty party, we also did some damage by wiping out some unique New Zealand species, such as the Moa[5]. Until mammals came along, birds were the dominate species of the island, which is one of the factors that makes its ecosystem so interesting to study.

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/29/170600655/beh...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

[3] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8021...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa

I think these studies underestimate how lazy a well-fed cat is. Lots of annecdotes ahoy!

I feed (and fix and tame and try to place) a decent number of local strays. In the past five years I've only seen a cat really hunt twice - after being thrown out of his house (but before realizing I'd feed him) he killed and ate two squirrels. There has been maybe half a dozen mice and voles, and maybe twice as many cicadas. I've seen cats watch birds but I've never seen them pounce. Only very hungry cats bother with hunting fast moving prey, and our local bird population remains stable. (Counterpoint, I am pretty sure everything here nests in trees and out of reach of all but the most determined cat. Other areas with lots of ground-nesters are probably more vulnerable.)

What has been wrecked is the local snake population. The area used to have small, cute and harmless Northern Brown snakes everywhere. Adorible things, about 10 inches long and become tame after 15 minutes of handling and never bite. Every spring I'll pull a bunch of these snakes out of the jaws of a cat, maybe half survive. Snakes are too slow and irresistible to surive a bored cat.

Feed the cats and the birds will do fine.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storeria_dekayi

I tend to agree that domestic cats with owners are not really the problem (ours when I was a kid living a farm did kill some birds/snakes/rabbits, but not in large numbers). Although cats as pets might not be killing as much as their feral cousins, the impact of a bird being killed by a cat though is a bit worse than non-bird victims. The likelihood the offspring of the victim bird will not reach adulthood is near 100% versus only 50% (or less in animals that don't require parental rearing) with other animal victims[1].

The problem is more with feral cats that people dump and have no source of food other than what they catch. Combined with most of them not being spayed or neutered, the feral cat populations in many countries grows at an alarming rate as they tend to not have any natural predators. However, that has changed a bit here in the United States with the rise of the coyote populations recently and may help to stabilize the feral cat problem.

[1] near 100% since most birds need both parents to raise their young (and will likely abandon the nest if one is killed) and the 50% coming from the chance the animal killed was a female non-avian species.

I wonder what kind of equipment they use. I can't imagine strapping a Raspberry Pi to my cat to find out what he's up to. Do they use custom built hardware?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Cat-Secret-Life-Ca...

Do not watch the video of cat number 4. You have been warned.

I imagine most cat owners are quite familiar with this.

I can guess what the video is about (not really wanting to watch it) and I saw it quite a bit of it living on a farm when I was younger where we kept cats to take care of the rodent problem.

I like cats well enough, but I never really got used to seeing the results of their "sadistic side" (if you can call it that) and what they left behind. Kind of silly, but I would avoid them for a period of time after one of them decided to make a cardinal, rabbit or goldfinch its living play toy. We fed them well on top of the rodents they caught, but cats being cats, can't help themselves[1]. I know it's the way they are, but I like pretty much all animals, so seeing senseless killing was just somewhat irritating.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Anonymous

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