tane
Anarchist
- 998
- 303
to see clearer with the "free-running-cats-are-killing-all-birds" thing I had a talk with the resident MSc in behavioural biology & this is the gist of what he said:
1. for thousands of years domesticated cats have been bred for a keen hunting instinct, as their purpose was to hunt crop vermin like rats & mice. No wild cat would keep killing after having had it's fill, they kill, feed, sleep it off. Not so the domestic cat: it keeps killing, playing with prey animals. With rats & mice, extremely plentyful in former times: purpose fulfilled.
2. "population density": wild cats have a territory size of up to 12km², with somewhat overlapping tomcat territories. This large area combined with the lack of "killer instincts" of the domestic cats leads to a sustainable predation on the prey-species of the cats, no overpredation takes place.
A 12km² residential area has a cat population of many hundreds & can support this cat population only because everybody feeds their cats. Many cats share the same territoty & avoid conflicts by "time-sharing": the same area is roamed by many cats, but at different times of the day. This extremely high population density combined with the in-bred "killer instinct" of the domestic cats leads to a severe over-predation on the prey species: not only ground-breeding birds, even more so all sorts of reptiles (the birds can at least fly away) & amphibians etc. get predated on in an unsustainable way.
3. cat-shit: the concentration of toxoplamosis "oozysts" in cat faeces is often very high. Spores of the parasite can "survive" a very long time in the ground, can be airborne if dried, during gardening humans can be infected, with sometimes dire results in human foeti if the mother is infected during pregnancy.
Personality changes in infected humans are (for obvious reasons...) not well supported by studies, but correlations seem to exist:
men become more dominant & women more promiscuous. As stated: these are correlations; causalities are not (well) established.
Decide yourself, if the self-indulgence of letting your "kitty" run free is responsible.
1. for thousands of years domesticated cats have been bred for a keen hunting instinct, as their purpose was to hunt crop vermin like rats & mice. No wild cat would keep killing after having had it's fill, they kill, feed, sleep it off. Not so the domestic cat: it keeps killing, playing with prey animals. With rats & mice, extremely plentyful in former times: purpose fulfilled.
2. "population density": wild cats have a territory size of up to 12km², with somewhat overlapping tomcat territories. This large area combined with the lack of "killer instincts" of the domestic cats leads to a sustainable predation on the prey-species of the cats, no overpredation takes place.
A 12km² residential area has a cat population of many hundreds & can support this cat population only because everybody feeds their cats. Many cats share the same territoty & avoid conflicts by "time-sharing": the same area is roamed by many cats, but at different times of the day. This extremely high population density combined with the in-bred "killer instinct" of the domestic cats leads to a severe over-predation on the prey species: not only ground-breeding birds, even more so all sorts of reptiles (the birds can at least fly away) & amphibians etc. get predated on in an unsustainable way.
3. cat-shit: the concentration of toxoplamosis "oozysts" in cat faeces is often very high. Spores of the parasite can "survive" a very long time in the ground, can be airborne if dried, during gardening humans can be infected, with sometimes dire results in human foeti if the mother is infected during pregnancy.
Personality changes in infected humans are (for obvious reasons...) not well supported by studies, but correlations seem to exist:
men become more dominant & women more promiscuous. As stated: these are correlations; causalities are not (well) established.
Decide yourself, if the self-indulgence of letting your "kitty" run free is responsible.
