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I 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.
by coldcode 6y ago
I 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.