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When I read that article, all I could think of was this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Pyu-Cj0gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Pyu-Cj0gg (In cas
by joncrane 6y ago
When I read that article, all I could think of was this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Pyu-Cj0gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Pyu-Cj0gg
(In case you're sensitive, it's farmers using pitchforks to turn soil in a fallow or recently harvested field that is ridden with rats, which flushes the rats. There are a handful of ratting dogs milling about which immediately chase and kill the rats. The way they do it is the dog grabs the rat in it's mouth and shakes its head wildly. This breaks the rat's back and stuns it. It's actually pretty impressive, if violent and macabre.)
I think there are dogs that would find it fun as heck to live in that area of Australia for a few weeks.
- coldcode 6y agoI wonder how many cats every house needs to rid it of mice. Given the volume, I doubt there are enough cats in Australia to even make a dent.
- djrogers 6y agoCats are incredibly efficient hunters. I’d venture that 1-2 per household would quickly make a huge difference in the population, although a good number of those would have to be outdoor / barn / feral cats to have along term effect. Disneyland has roughly 400 cats that keep the park largely rodent free, which is a minor miracle given the amount of food there is there.
- alistairSH 6y agoPlus, you'd see a noticeable decline in local birds, which might not be desirable.
- dwaite 6y ago* Except a few giant rodents they largely stay away from
- dredmorbius 6y agoROUSes?
- dehrmann 6y ago> largely rodent free Oh, the irony.
- goldenkey 6y agoMickey Mouse begs to differ :-)
- eknkc 6y agoI’m Turkish and I find it interesting that the US and European cities are dealing with mouse / rat issues. We have tons of cats roaming the streets. I guess that’s the reason but I have ever seen one or maybe 2 live rats in my entire life.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoWhen I visited Athens, the massive colonies of feral cats were very notable. They could take over parks. American culture is specifically oriented toward preventing this kind of thing from happening. A feral cat is judged to be in need of a home. And there is a very widespread popular effort to say that you are doing something immoral if you don't spay your cat -- if a fertile cat did go feral, it might have children!
- path411 6y agoI live in a major us city and there has to be 30+ feral cats within my block it's crazy.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoThat would be a pitifully small number compared to a park in Athens.
- jamiek88 6y agoHardly any then compared to Turkey! There’d be at least a couple hundred in any one block. Thousands at night.
- stretchwithme 6y agoSome of those folks say they believe in animal rights too. Keeping someone captive and ending their ability to reproduce seems more like abuse than love.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoAn animal rights activist is also going to take into account the quality of life of birds and other animals that cats slaughter by the billions.
- thatguy0900 6y agoAustralia actually started a program to kill off feral cat populations a few years ago
- 0xfaded 6y agoIn Australia feral cats are culled since they kill the native animals. There's even a guy that skins them and turns then into stubby holders. https://youtu.be/VaB9J8JHVxI https://youtu.be/VaB9J8JHVxI
- dehrmann 6y agoI'm always surprised that cats are able to dominate ecosystems like this. You'd think a local apex predator would have filled that niche and been better adapted to the environment.
- BoiledCabbage 6y agoPound for pound, it's hard to think of a more effective hunter than a cat. Their skill set is absurd. Absolutely silent, leap multiple times their body length, jaws & claws, climb, extremely agile / flexible and fast.
- NaturalPhallacy 6y ago>Pound for pound, it's hard to think of a more effective hunter than a cat. Owls. The larger ones will kill even cats.
- XorNot 6y agoOwls aren't as prolific though if pest control is your goal. A cat will happily kill a dozen mice and eat exactly one. They are adorable murder-machines.
- mod 6y agoDecent hearing, great eyesight
- DecoPerson 6y agoMarsupial lions were believed to fill this gap in the food chain. Unfortunately, they died out 60,000 years ago. Now cats and foxes are hunting native species, some faster than is sustainable. Eventually an equilibrium will be found, where the wild cat and fox populations can’t be sustained due to over-hunting, but it will likely come at the cost of many native species disappearing.
- belorn 6y agoMice are instinctually afraid of the smell of cats, so the cat would not need to actually kill them to get the desired effect. In this case however when we have hundreds of new mice each day, the fear effect and eating of mice would likely just be a drop in the bucket. The mice from nearby farmland and forests are fleeing starvation. A single house can collect and kill thousands a week and still more are coming, and the flood of mice can start up from apparently nowhere if you live near such areas. The only good thing is that it will stop at some point, and the professional traps can help to keep the situation at bay.
- quickthrowman 6y ago> I wonder how many cats every house needs to rid it of mice. Anecdotally, one.
- wruza 6y agoObligatory Andrew Ucles tutorial on cats: https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cTV6mKV6oE https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cTV6mKV6oE
- perl4ever 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_in_Australia "Feral cats are one of the major invasive species in Australia" "In 2016, 29% of Australian households had a domesticated cat" "Cats in Australia have no natural predators except dingoes and wedge-tailed eagles, and as a result, they are apex predators where neither the dingo nor the eagle exists" Based on the given figure of 2 million or more feral cats in Australia, each killing 740 wild animals a year, that's 1.5 billion total. So, given all that, I wonder why the mice are a problem at the moment.
- inglor_cz 6y agoI am weird enough to see an optimalization problem in the video. How many dogs are too many? Obviously, two are better than one, but fifty isn't better than twenty. Just saying. Also, the comment saying "that is why dogs like squeaking toys" is spot on, though the idea is probably uncomfortable to regular dog owners.
- joncrane 6y agoYou can also tell that some of the dogs are way more "into it" than others. It's a typical pareto distribution. 20% of the dogs are killing 80% of the rats.
- 34679 6y agoOptimization.
- 1-more 6y agoHere's an example of a dog optimizing a simple calculus problem! https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/public_html/103/Pennings_DogsCalculus.pdf https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/public_html/10...
- secondcoming 6y agoDo deaf dogs not like squeaky toys?
- PicassoCTs 6y ago
- checker 6y agoIf you look closely one of the dogs swallows a rat whole. Yum.
- Nerada 6y agoThat was an incredibly interesting watch, I had no idea this was a thing. Is there something special about where they're digging for it to be plagued with such a large amount of rats? It looks like it would take weeks to cover all of their land with this digging + dog method.
- joncrane 6y agoMy guess is that it's a field that was harvested in the past weeks. Harvesting crops makes a lot of edible material fall to the ground. I believe the "leftovers" from the harvest attracts the rats.
- saul_goodman 6y agoIt looks maby like the remains of a row of haylage. Basically chopped corn, stalk and all, which is used to feed livestock. Usually you see this stuff in long white bags in the US country side, but there are multiple ways to store it. The stuff smells ferocious and self ferments. So they've probably used up the previous years haylage pile and now they are cleaning house so the rats don't totally mow down the spring planting their about to do.
- CJ808 6y agoI think 30 secs in shows a building on skids. It’s probably something like a chicken house that has been moved across the field. The rats are in amongst the old poop.
- paranoidrobot 6y agoIt's not a regular field. That building you can see at about 30 seconds in is on skids, it is a barn/coop for chickens (or perhaps some other similarly small and light animal). The bottom of the building is slatted to allow waste and other debris to fall through. Because it's warm, and there's a constant sufficient supply of food it's an attractive home for rats and mice. On some kind of regular schedule, the barn will be pulled along to a new location to allow the droppings/waste to be cleaned up, and the rats to be killed off.
- clairity 6y ago> "The way they do it is the dog grabs the rat in it's mouth and shakes its head wildly." my dog is a terrier/spitz mix and shows this behavior in play (from the terrier side, the spitz side just makes her pretty =). she'll grab a stick or other small item and shake it wildly while bucking about. most people think it's hilarious until i tell them why she does it. =D
- alistairSH 6y agoMy 7lb cotton ball Maltese does the same thing. It's hilarious. He also loves to chase squirrels. Same dog yelped like he was being flayed alive when a neighborhood cat playfully swatted his nose. Ridiculous creature.
- tomcam 6y agoI love that description, thanks.
- cptskippy 6y agoMany people forget that dog breeds exist for specific purposes and not just for looks. Just as mastiffs were bread to pull knights from horses, many small dogs were bread for rodent and pest control.
- mncharity 6y agoYears back I worked on a "configure a dog" educational interactive. IIRC, dogs share a common hunting sequence of behaviors, and some of their domesticated diversity stems from being able to genetically adjust the strength of those behaviors. So a retriever for instance, has the "bite hard" and "shake it" dialed down, and the "carry it home" dialed up.
- xeromal 6y agoSounds like an RPG. haha
- 6y ago
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoOr this guy, who uses trained mink and dogs for rat (and muskrat) control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzZLI04_is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvzZLI04_is
- dwd 6y agoI've been ferreting for rabbits and the nets do most of the work, with the ferrets popping out later looking bemused after not catching anything. But those minks are insanely fast and brutal.
- chefkoch 6y agoThat's why these breads were called rattler in german. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattler https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattler
- vmladenov 6y agoMy dog does this to his stuffed animals, blankets, etc. The agility of the motion is incredible.
- jamiek88 6y agoYep and the power and whip they get into it. The plastic end hit my leg once and left a huge welt. Can easy snap a rat spine. It’s completely baked into their dna too. You see the wolf inside.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- petepete 6y agoThere's an entire category of dog bred entirely for that purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratter_(dog) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratter_(dog)
- abstractbarista 6y agoThanks for sharing this - it is fascinating to see the dogs working together with people. They are very efficient!