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My apologies, I misread your comment. I think it's safe to say that the number of animals killed by pet cats is disputed. It will also be quite different in di

by ajb 2y ago

My apologies, I misread your comment. I think it's safe to say that the number of animals killed by pet cats is disputed. It will also be quite different in different places; my figures come from my area. The situation is also very different in Australia, where cats are a recent introduction, and the native population is naive to them, versus countries where this is not the case. I certainly don't defend letting cats outside in Australia or New Zealand. In other places it's more a question about equilibrium. All wild animals die, either from predation, starvation, or disease; predation may not be the worse death. Nor is predation necessarily a sign of disequilibrium (IE, cats causing a falling wildlife population) - at equilibrium it's still possible for 100% of deaths to be by predation, as the older animals get slower and are predated. The exact effect of pet cats is therefore quite involved, and counting the number of kills won't tell you the whole picture even if you could get that figure.

richardw 2y ago
No problem. And you’re right it’s never simple. If cats weren’t there, native animals would be doing the predation. We enable cats to out-compete other animals. Islands make it easier to measure the impact but obviously this plays out similarly in all places. We like cats, help them where we can, have devoted much of our internet bandwidth to them, and there’s no way that is a positive for other animals in the ecosystem. The level of impact is debatable but it’s not anywhere near positive. I lived in South Africa. Tons of cats in cities and very few species of birds. Go to a reserve with “proper” wildlife and there are tons of bird species and no cats. They’re utterly out-competed when the playing field is level. Going back to the article, if we feed pigeons they’ll increase in number until we get a new equilibrium. So our current state isn’t an act of god, and by doing more of the same we’ll just exacerbate the problem. Humane management is surely a better idea, like the fake eggs approach described by another commenter. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40771093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40771093)

by ajb 2y ago

richardw 2y ago

No problem. And you’re right it’s never simple. If cats weren’t there, native animals would be doing the predation. We enable cats to out-compete other animals. Islands make it easier to measure the impact but obviously this plays out similarly in all places. We like cats, help them where we can, have devoted much of our internet bandwidth to them, and there’s no way that is a positive for other animals in the ecosystem. The level of impact is debatable but it’s not anywhere near positive. I lived in South Africa. Tons of cats in cities and very few species of birds. Go to a reserve with “proper” wildlife and there are tons of bird species and no cats. They’re utterly out-competed when the playing field is level. Going back to the article, if we feed pigeons they’ll increase in number until we get a new equilibrium. So our current state isn’t an act of god, and by doing more of the same we’ll just exacerbate the problem. Humane management is surely a better idea, like the fake eggs approach described by another commenter. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40771093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40771093)