> History is full of such attempts, almost always gone wrong, to modify the presence or the activities of single species.
This kind of cascading side effects can actually work out. The best example is the reintroduction of the wolf in Yellowstone [1], but similar effects have also been observed in Germany [2]. Another "key species", at least here in Europe, is the beaver [3], because its creation of wetlands aside of rivers creates an entire ecosystem for birds and reptiles.
It's probably a lot safer to reintroduce a species that was previosuly there than introduce a novel one, particularly if it hasn;t been gone all that long. Reintroduce the wooly mammoth, nothing can go wrong. Reintroduce the velociraptor, something might go wrong.
“Humankind's common ancestor with other mammals may have been a roughly rat-size animal that weighed no more than a half a pound, had a long furry tail and lived on insects.”
>>Relationships so complex as to connect everything to everything in a single network of the living.
>>Playing with something whose working mechanisms are not well known is clearly dangerous. The consequences can be completely unpredictable. The strength of ecological communities is one of the engines of life on Earth. At every level, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, it is these communities, understood
as relationships among the living, that allow life to persist.
While climate change rightfully gets huge headlines, it is easier to understand than the ecosystem and food web, which is also being rapidly broken (in no small part by climate change).
While some effects of climate change can be mitigated, a sufficiently broken food web is unlikely to be recoverable on a humanity-helpful time scale.
This. Domestic cats are some of the most specialized killing machines in nature. Everything is raw murder machine.
Massive muscle to weight ratio, optimized for extreme agility. 30mph top speed blows the doors off nearly anything it may encounter in nature. Tail allows for balance while running. Able to jump multiple times its own height. Able to fall a multiple of it's jump height. 20 built-in claws also act as tools to assist in movement and extreme climbing ability. Bite force enables additional attack vectors. Night vision. Ability to track small objects. Insane paw-eye coordination. Cats (big and small) are best predator.
All to sleep on your lap.
Edit: Also did I mention their incredible sense of smell and their built-in instinct to hide their tracks? Every. Single. Detail. Murder.
Direct registering walking, too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8riT_b8xbxg). Whiskers to feel air currents, sense prey close to their face, and estimate the dimension of holes. Swiveling ears to precisely locate faint scurrying sounds. Raspy tongues to hold prey. 200-degree visual fields with crazy-good motion detection.
I love my cats, but I often think about how utterly terrifying they'd be if I were prey-sized. (I.e., Adjusting for scales, I'd probably rather take my chances with a Xenomorph than a good mouser domestic cat.)
My understanding is that it's higher than their terminal velocity, which makes any height fairly low risk. They can be expected to survive falling out of an airplane, for example.
The ultra-high upper frequency limit of their hearing also allows them to detect the hypersonic communications of mice, which is why they always seem to know where one is. Dogs cannot hear this high.
I’ve read that they also attack reptiles in a way that exploits a reptilian weakness, which is their greatly reduced (relative to mammals) capacity for dealing with lactic acid buildup. They goad snakes, etc into repeated dramatic movements which causes their muscles to quickly saturate with lactic acid, greatly reducing their mobility.
The fact that we feed them breaks their equilibrium with their prey. Normally a predator starts running out of food as it wipes out its prey, but not domestic cats. And not just pets, we also feed the ferals.
You missed a crucial bit of the abstract (my emphasis):
> We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.4-3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually. Un-owned cats, as opposed to owned pets, cause the majority of this mortality.
From the text of the paper, "majority" means 69% for birds and 89% for mammals. Feral cats kill a lot of animals, because that's what they eat. Pet cats do not. "Domestic cat" here means F. catus, not cats that live in homes.
Also, i wouldn't attach complete confidence to this paper. Firstly, it was written by bird conservationists, who have a dog in this fight (as it were). Secondly, it contains some dubious numbers (eg bird return rate per owned cat per year of 4.2 - 18.3 in US and Europe studies - and yet my mum's cats all brought in 0 - 1 per year). I'm not saying ignore it, but don't treat it as gospel - and it would be great to see responses to it, and other work on this subject.
The last cat I had that was allowed to go outside was a fearsome mouser, delighted in toying with them and was quite the biology teacher, showing off their inner anatomy to us kids.
However, birds mercilessly teased him as he had no clue how to catch one, surrounding him while he lay on the grass, chirping, then flying just far enough away when he'd move towards them.
A neighbors cat was being harassed by a bird once. It would dive bomb the cat then fly away quickly. It did this multiple times while I watched. The cat got tired of it after a while and stood perfectly still. The bird swooped down toward it and, just as it was close enough, the cat leapt in the air twisting its body upside down mid leap and grabbed the bird from the air. It was the first time I saw how a normal cat could be such an effective natural killer.
Seagulls hang in the air at the Helsinki market square, opportunistically snatching french fries and ice cream and such from tourists. It has occurred to me that any person as focused as that cat could lunge and grab one of these winged vermin out of the air. I myself would not try it because I'd be afraid of losing an eye to a panicking bird with a quite long beak.
Not quite sure I understand the point you're trying to make, because getting back to the original question, though, "Are modern cats even that good at killing rats anymore?" - the answer is yes, absolutely.
There is no real genetic difference, as a total population, between feral cats and cats owned as pets. Absolutely, as you point out, owned cats who know they'll get fed inside will murder outdoor animals just for fun, and they don't need to eat them to survive - but that's a learned behavior, nothing they were bred for. You take a normal tabby and leave it to have its litter outside, unowned, and those cats will turn into feral cats.
Many animal rescue organizations have developed "Barn cat programs" for feral cats. These cats have not been socialized to be around humans so they make bad pets, but they're happy to live in a barn and ensure it says rat-free: https://www.austinpetsalive.org/programs/barn-cat-program.
A wild cat would have parasites, a few still healing wounds, one eye and one of it's legs has bones did not heal quite straight. This is a cat that "naturally" hunts mice and birds. Compare that to a suburbian cat which is healthy, well fed and it's biggest health risk is obesity
That's my porch cat, Sable. She just showed up one day and made herself at home. Real sweet cat. I've taken her to the vet a few times for bad wounds.
Was on the porch the other night and saw her take a 15 foot dump out of a tree with a rat ( big one too). She landed on top and made short work of the rat. She's an excellent ratter.
Yeah, there's a HUGE difference in behavior between a house cat that gets all of its meals every day at home, and one that has to go out hunting for at least some of its food. The laziness of an indoor cat is a learned behavior.
I wouldn't say my cats are smart but you can definitely see they are natural born killers. Everything they set their eyes on dies. Flies, spiders, you name it. Nothing is too quick for them.
I keep my cats indoors (we take them in to the garden from time to time under supervision) for a variety of reasons one of them being fluffy cute little murders who kill birds and such just for sport...
There are also birds which are smarter then cats where "killer instincts" don't work on. For example I've seen magpies "play" with cats to lure them away from their young. From the interaction it was clear the magpies were employing strategy while the cat was just reacting.
What I find fascinating is the ability our cat has to mimic a crying baby - this really upsets my wife. As I am the main cat servant in our household when our cat wants services (food, cuddle etc.) it complains to my wife who then issues the relevant orders to me.
I've heard this for years with the concept that the cat's vocal range developed to be like this. But not once had I ever heard a cat sound anything unlike a cat. Until...my recent adopted fur baby. He freaks me out how much like a kid he sounds. Just the other day, he let out a sound that even my coworkers on a meeting call thought I had a kid. It's a little unsettling at times
Mine has learned exactly what corners to yell into such that their cry/meow echoes and reverberates everywhere so it can't be ignored. It's kind of impressive how smart and adaptable cats are, lol.
It's not even necessarily aimed at us. Mountain lions and bobcats can sound remarkably human and I'd be shocked if they ever had enough human prey for that to be intentional.
>I'd be shocked if they ever had enough human prey for that to be intentional.
this just made me think of the movie Annihilation where the bear like creature got a human like voice. that would definitely make a walk in the woods a lot more creepy.
I've heard coyotes make a sound like a crying child (I was in a nature preserve and went to the source until I saw it) so there is some cross species commonality in sound for some reason and there is evidence for recognition of crying baby primates by crocodiles.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/nile-crocodile...
> I wouldn't say my cats are smart but you can definitely see they are natural born killers. Everything they set their eyes on dies. Flies, spiders, you name it. Nothing is too quick for them.
Most cats I've known don't kill much. They might pounce on a lizard or fly to catch it and play with it, but I can't remember the last time I've seen them actually kill something. Certainly never gotten the fabled "gift" of a dead animal from a disappointed cat who thinks I can't get my own food. I wonder what the difference is.
We have two cats and it differs from cat to cat, and with age.
When they were young our female would hunt quite a bit, certainly several times a month. Our male was hopeless at it, occasionally bringing back a live mouse and then not knowing what to do with it.
Now they have got older we have not had so much as a single mouse in a couple of years. I'm fairly sure I've seen more spiders as well.
But they'll never hunt a snake. They have an inbuilt terror of them. This is why they jump at cucumbers and hiss (trying to scare others with snake sounds)
Snakes are not a preferred target of cats but they will take them out.
From personal experience. Came home on a hot summer day. Let the cat loose and it immediately began to act unusual and drew our attention to a snake that had made it into the house. "Petals" ended the snake in short order without much fanfare.
Yes. There's plenty of rodents in urban and suburban areas, but above all, cats have an inborn instinct to murder small critters for fun, and don't need to be taught that.
Rodents are their strong preference, but if bored, they will go after bugs, small birds, lizards... or engage in relentless "murder practice" using pieces of paper or cloth.
This is very different than with dogs, which often have to be trained for specific tasks. Source: lived with 10+ cats (not at the same time).
The strength of those instincts does vary from cat to cat though.
I have two cats, and one is a cold blooded killer that'll attack anything that moves, including my toes. The other will just sniff spiders and cuddles rabbits and hamsters. It did once chase a small mouse, but once it had it cornered, it didn't do anything.
Cats and rabbits get along well because cats think grooming someone is dominant, but rabbits think being groomed is dominant, so they both think they're on top.
Domestic rabbits are the most attitude-y animals I've kept, with such surprisingly variable personalities.
I had a rabbit that we'd let out in the garden, and if the neighbour's cat came in the garden, the rabbit would chase it out, and even attack it if it wouldn't leave.
> cats have an inborn instinct to murder small critters for fun, and don't need to be taught that
If a cat has never seen mice before and no one has taught it to chase mice (and if it's not even hungry), then I simply can't imagine how this instinct is passed on through genetics. Is there a DNA encoding for "chase and kill small moving objects, preferably mouse-like objects"? Does anyone know how DNA would carry information like that?
Not a biologist, but it looks like it's an urge toward certain behaviors that just get reinforced. A mouse tail running away from them is very exciting and they want to chase it. But a piece of string can trigger the same thing. They run towards it, they jump on it, they bite it, if they're hungry they might eat it and eventually the whole thing becomes a trained behavior in wild cats. A well fed domestic cat might get stuck on "let's be play friends forever" though.
I've always had trouble with reconciling the jump from DNA to behaviours.
These behaviours can be affected by a complex combination of genetics and epigenetic modifications leading to changes like modified neuronal patterning in the brain or changes in neural circuitry that can affect how readily certain neural patterns are forged which is further influenced by biological factors (learned behaviours and experiences).
As others said, the hunting instinct is ever present in cats. Our indoor-only cat is always hunting flies or moths; the flies are very fast, but she manages to catch them under her paw, and play with them before eating them. Sometimes the fly escapes, but the cat catches it again.
My cat often brings mice and actually eat them. It's quite interesting, if gruesome, to observe because there seems to be a precise technique and it is very clean. He always starts with the head and usually there is nothing left apart from a very cleanly cut stomach, no blood, no mess.
Adopted my cat at ~9 months, 8 years in an apartment, moved to a rural property and he knew exactly what to do with mice and how to stalk them. Even losing 3 of his 4 fangs didn't slow him down.
Put a bell on your cat! Outdoor cats are responsible for a huge amount of ecological devastation, the least you can do, if you insist on your predator roaming freely outdoors, is put a bell on it to try and give local species a warning.
Cats as a species kill an emotionally large sum of birds and small mammals, but they don't radically transform ecosystems. It's human industry and habitat expansion that devastates ecologies, not their garden prowlers plucking the occasional bird or chipmunk.
Seconding this. OP, by letting your pet to roam around and have fun you are contributing to the local fauna's extinction. I hate to see how Australia[1] is responding to this issue but something needs to be done
I'm sort of laughing at the concept that we feel it strange that cats don't want to kill rats because of the size of the rats rather than the conversation leaning towards what are we doing that have caused rats to become so large.
I’ve come home to a rat body missing its head and even letting my indoor cats into the backyard might yield a dead bird or lizard on the kitchen floor.
Cats not raised to maturity by their mothers with significant outdoors access will be worse at hunting on average, as some of it is taught or just learned at a young age. They all still have hunting instincts.
My parents are taking care of my cat while I'm away. Little black cat. They let me know she killed a bat that'd gotten into the house last night. Woke them up. She's an indoor cat
If you take a kitten away from its mother within the first 2 weeks, and then keep it indoors 100% of the time, it might not get a chance to develop its hunting instincts.
Despite us wanting to muse about cats being outdoors as cute, they are the #1 human introduced predator of birds, and general outside pests. Their feces get other animals sick, and they effortlessly destroy months of nature's progress just roaming.
Reminds me of the neighbors across the street who were too lazy to get rid of an old half-barrel planter on their porch that was full of dirt and nothing else. It had hundreds of holes in the soil. Bumblebee nests. Every day, they'd take the chance of getting bopped by one of them as they entered or exited their home.
That sounds awesome, actually. I'd love to attract bumblebees. I like to watch them, and love the sound they make, plus all the benefits of native pollinators...
Bumblebees are usually not aggressive, though they can sting multiple times (like wasps and unlike honeybees).
I have a lavender bush in my front yard. Besides smelling nice to people, bumblebees seem to love it. I often see half a dozen to a dozen at least as I go by. Other lavender bushes in the neighborhood always have bumblebees, too. (And the lavender bush also seems to be pretty low maintenance; it was there when we moved in a decade ago and seems to be thriving while I've just left it alone.)
It’s been so long since I’ve been stung I don’t know which hurts more, but it must be noted the reason honey bees sting only once is that the stinger is barbed and hooks into the skin of its victim. The bee might leave, but will not live to fight another day - the bee is essentially disemboweled, as the stinger-attached organ producing/pumping venom is pulled from its guts to leave behind with the embedded stinger, continuing to pump venom into the unfortunate recipient.
Yes - it hurts you, but it kills the bee. Honeybees don't want to sting you, but will if they need to.
Note also that the "continuing to pump venom" is why you shouldn't pinch a stinger to remove it - scrape it out w/ a fingernail or other item to avoid injecting yet more venom into the sting.
Best way to attract bumblebees and other native pollinators is plant native flowering plants. There are non-native plants, like dandelion, bee balm, and lavender that they really like.
I have to stand up for the poor, misunderstood wasp ;) First of, most kinds of wasps are not especially aggressive, for example consider the hornet or any of the solitaries. The ones you are probably thinking of when you say "asshole wasps" are the Common Wasp, the German Wasp and the Yellowjacket, which are all social nest builders. They are also very well adapted to human habitats, so we often occupy the same space. I had to spend two seasons with nests of German Wasps near my porch (they are a protected species and only moved if absolutely necessary) before they were driven out by hornets (another social wasp).
Thus I can only talk about the Common and the German Wasps with confidence. Those are not assholes most part of their short lives. They are animals and as such show predictable behaviour. Corner them, squeeze them, go near their nest, or suffocate them (e.g. breath on them) and they defend themselves. Otherwise, a busy worker wasp will just ignore you, just like a bee would.
Unfortunatly worker wasps are only busy 9/10 if their lives. The last 1/10 are a spent in a drunken stupor. Once the nest closes down the worker wasps suddenly become homeless and unemployed. Devoid of purpose, they spend their remaining days binging on sugar and fat, looking for brawls (a little bit like football hooligans). Unfortunatly the hunger for sugar and fat brings them even more in contact with humans, because we are a ready source for all of this.
Still, we can manage, most of us are smarter than them. If you have a fixed position, e.g. a porch, take packaging paper and rumple it into a football sized contraption resembling a social wasps nest and hang it somewhere visible. Wasps try to avoid other nests. If you are lucky hornets nest nearby. Hornets are usually docile, very easy to spot and avoid, but they are fierce nest protectors. They also like to snack on wasps.
When camping, sacrifice a beer or other sugary substance by putting it very accessible in a bowl a 5 or so metres away from where you are sitting. Coordinate with your neighbors if it is crowded ;) Even hooligan wasps prefer the troublefree beverage to zipping around other troublesome animals (i.e. us). Last but not least, you can almost always wave individual wasps aside. Take a sheet of paper or handheld fan and slowly produce an airstream to keep them away from that sugary pie-hole in your face.
I have only been stung once in the last 10 years or so and only because the poor thing got entangled in my shirt and panicked.
I remember my dad actually petting one that was busy collecting nectar from one of our garden plants, with his bare finger. I've never been brave enough to repeat that particular experiment but my experience too is that bumblebees are usually very docile.
The only time I've ever heard of someone getting a bumblebee sting is when they actually got one caught inside their shirt and got three or four good zaps. They are like wasps in that their stingers don't fall out when they sting, so they can keep going as long as they have venom left.
Apparently they are somewhat less docile when it comes to other bees, apparently they can be fairly aggressive and too many bumblebees around can outcompete local honeybees.
In Germany during Summer, it is great time to make friends with wasps when eating outside, they take less than a minute to show up from who knows where.
So one gets used to try to showe them away, collecting them in inverted glasses until the party is over, have something burning that might keep them way, or just surrender let them pick something and enjoy a couple of minutes pause until they take the little piece of food back to the nest (and then return).
I didn’t even know those big black bumblebees were bees. I remember catching and gently playing with one and my grandma telling me it was a bumblebee! It never harmed me.
I got stung by a bumblebee while hiking once. My friend and I had stopped to chat with some other hikers and this big slow fuzzy bee buzzes over, lands on my arm, stings me, then just flys away. There was no sudden movement, we hadn't just invaded their nest, or really any reason for it to sting me that I could see.
They are docile, until you step near their nest and they became super hostile. We were walking with my two daughters and that happen by accident. They stung my older daughter 7 or 8 times and me 2 times. I thought the stings would be painful, but in fact, they were not so painful, like a horsefly. Those guys chased us for 50 meters (or yards)
The yellow jacket wasps in the ground can be dealt with using a clear bowl and some dirt. In the evening (when they are dormant), place the clear bowl over the entrance, and seal the edges with the dirt. Be sure that there is still plenty of clear glass/plastic. With the clear 'window' area, they will keep trying to get out, but if it is fully covered, they will be motivated to dig a new entrance/exit hole. After about 3 days, there will be no activity.
The vacuum method is useful when they are in a building. Use a strong shop-vac. Mount the hose a few inches from the outlet, and turn it on for an hour each day. If you turn it on more than that, they'll learn to avoid it. This took about a week to terminate the hive.
I've done both, but only reluctantly when they are a real hazard (minimize cruelty; these aren't quick deaths). The nest will die out anyway in the autumn, except for the queen and then it will move for the next year.
Went on a wasp jihad as a teenager. Waited til dusk, hit all the nests with bug spray, used a stick to knock'em into coffee cans, added gasoline and torched'em up. Oddly satisfying.
This kind of cascading side effects can actually work out. The best example is the reintroduction of the wolf in Yellowstone [1], but similar effects have also been observed in Germany [2]. Another "key species", at least here in Europe, is the beaver [3], because its creation of wetlands aside of rivers creates an entire ecosystem for birds and reptiles.
[1] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...
[2] https://www.quarks.de/umwelt/tierwelt/der-wolf-zurueck-in-de...
[3] https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/artenvielfalt-bibe...