I've had several outdoor cats, and only 1 would actively hunt, and in all these years I only found a single dead bird. 3-4 outdoor cars on my block, never found anything dead. I don't get it when people say cats are such a scrouge.
Maybe they're so well fed now days they don't bother to hunt? Seems people used to be meaner to strays, haven't seen a skinny/sickly cat in ages.
I think the point that most people miss is that these studies mix together domestic and unowned/ feral cats. It is highly likely that our domestic cats who are fed well don't hunt as much
You should keep your pet indoors too. Lots of well-fed pet cats like to hunt small mammals and birds because it's what they're wired to do. Many many housecats bring their owners gifts of dead birds and mice.
I find at least 5 dead birds every year. I have blink camera videos of the local cats stalking the birds.
More than anything else, it's inconsiderate to your neighbors who might not want your cats on their property. My wife and I take great joy in watching the local doves nest and raise chicks, and we will absolutely defend them from feral pests and outdoor "pets" alike.
"Other collision's" kinda takes blame away from what's happening, its glass windows.
This from wiki: "a 2024 study on the survival rate of bird-building collision victims indicates that previous research was vastly underestimating the number of deaths caused by collisions, and in actuality well over 1 billion birds die from collisions in the United States every year."
Fun fact, there's a layer they can put in glass that makes it visible to birds but not us, but its more expensive, so it isn't used most places!
There's a couple of other websites selling similar things, you can also buy UV film yourself to apply to your own windows. I first learned about it on Grand Designs!
Oh god, another time I see that cat killing birds statistics.
Cats prefer to kill rodents and are more equipped to it. And the same study Loss et al estimates cat killing rodents to be 4 times more than birds.
Rodents (e.g. rats) eats bird eggs. Same researcher fails to calculate how much...
All studies (well, 1 study in Australia) that compared bird population with cats in rodent areas confirm that removal of cats hastened decrease of bird population 2 times.
Loss at all is a metastudy. Some of the data sources on cat predation and other collisions are 70-100 years old. Some are more recent, but overall data quality on bird death is local, from small sample, and estimated. My favourite was a study on 10 cats in 3 villages estimated over a whole damn country.
The graph seems to be missing all other non-collision sources of bird population death, e.g. rodents eating birds, pesticide related deaths, electrocutions form powerlines, etc. etc.
Yes, simplified thinking here led to Mao killing off sparrow to protect crops only for those crops to be eaten by insects that otherwise would have been managed by said sparrows…
There's no denying that outdoor cats kill birds but you're right that those numbers are inflated. Plus, the problem with looking back 70-100 years back isn't just methodology but it's the fact that stray and feral cats are much better maintained in the last few decades. It's a problem many counties actually bothered to tackle with high profile neutering campaigns and such. So, I bet the numbers are probably lower than collisions at this point.
Context also matters a lot-- cats are, like us, an invasive species. The most evidence of it being a problem are in places where there were no major predators for birds (mostly thinking of islands like New Zealand). But that's less a matter of bird deaths so much as a matter of man made ecological changes leading to endangerment.
It's also weird how much easier it should be to just not have clear glass skyscrapers murdering thousands of birds vs what, killing off cats? What even is the end game to that statistic, lol.
No need to be an asshole. There is a large cultural difference between the US and EU on this issue. Expert opinion is also divided, of low quality and influenced by local opinion.
Americans tend to think in moral absolutes about everything, and from their moral absolutism have an unwavering delusional confidence that they are 'correct' because of their feelings. It's why we are so backwards in so many ways.
Birds good, cats bad. Full stop. If you don't agree you are evil and clearly support bird genocide!
No other possibility is allowed in the discussion, like understanding that systems are complex and/or that not all cats are the same, or that the studies often quoted on these issues are flawed and problematic in many ways. And that the general solution to the problem... the control of the feral cat population, is one both 'sides' already agree on. Because there is no 'drama' in that. It's much more dramatic to scream at every cat owner they are a evil person if they allow their cat outside at any time ever.
People are taking this really personally, the chart isn't even throwing shade at cats. It's saying look how small this is compared to something basically no one cares about in the US. Domestic and the resulting feral cats are a human created invasive species issue that way worse and more destructive than we give it credit for because we love cats.
I'm tangentially involved enough in local spay/neuter programs and you can see these consequences locally wherever you live.
Like I love cats, I have 4 indoor, no outdoor animals, but people are really trying to act like feral cat predation is no big deal. It is a huge deal, we just don't care, and if we don't care about a billion birds getting killed by cats, and a quarter billion by windows, why the hell would we care about the 7 that windmills killed in comparison.
Wind turbines kill as many birds in the US as the feral cats in my COUNTY do.
Yep, there we go. Projection is the final stage of denial. Congrats you did it.
People who vaccinate at the true menace! This is why I assume people are stupid. Few people are willing to critically examine their own behavior when called out on it.
I'm being called and asshole in this thread and you don't see me denying that shit. I own it.
One desd bird doesn't mean it only killed one. Also, the other comments that it's feral cats is spot on.
One concern is well fed outdoor cats normalized people who have feral cats , especially the kinds they dump a bag of food every now and then and think they mean they aren't part of the problem.
And in general, people should not allow their pets outside. We do it for cats but not other animals because people think their cats is never a nuisance; bird killer or otherwise.
All the science says don't let your cat out. Pointing at one specific stat and ripping it apart and claiming victory is exactly how we allowed climate change to just slip away for over 60 years now.
It's not a problem if I dump some motor oil into the ground because oil tankers leaker more! Either too contribute or too don't and I'm going to be a dick to anyone that contributes no matter how little.
Cat wellbeing doesn't say that. Cat depression rates in high enriched indoor environments neither. Keeping the cat indoors is like keeping the people forced to stay in home during Covid - it has negative wellbeing consequences.
Pointing at one specific stat and ripping it apart and claiming victory is exactly how we allowed climate change to just slip away for over 60 years now.
What the heck are you talking about? What stat? There are studies that show that the cats kill mostly rodents (Lowes et al.), and that average bird prey is old or sick. The biggest problem with bird population dropping is not invasive cat species, but invasive human species.
Bird loss is a function of habitat shrinking, climat change, pesticides and pollution. Any fix must focus on that instead of a cheap scapegoat. Do you know how I can tell that? Because the birds are dropping world wide (over 66% of bird species are in decline), outside of outdoor cat heavy areas you seem to want to focus on.
They also stop or reduce turbine speed during peak migration season, and scientists have found that painting one of the blades a dark color prompts the birds to fly further away from the turbine.
They do kill a lot of birds though, and bats. An absolute fuckton of bats. My partner did turbine strike studies in college, and said that the number of bat deaths is really disheartening. Bats in my area like to find the tallest "snag" to roost in... Guess what a wind turbine looks like to them...
Domestic cats are not native to the US. Their presence is absolutely human caused. And lack of efforts to contain them is also the fault of humans. People should not feed the strays in their neighborhoods. People should not let their own cats outside. Etc.
The fifth floor of our office building regularly has greasy pigeon marks from some poor skyrat thinking the windows that are A. moderately reflective B. dirty AF and C. have never been open are all of a sudden clear paths to the inside.
My somehow-now-conservative mom lives in the midwest and will rant long and hard about how windmills make the soil under them "dirty" because they "leak oil from the blades" and "all the farmers know it's true"
One of her friends probably listened to a talk show where two people bitched about it for 3 minutes and played some devil's advocate. I swear they use the conservative talk shows to train to become horrible people.
Even the low estimate for birds killed by collisions with cars seems high to me. I’ve been driving for over 25 years and think in that time I’ve only hit birds maybe twice, certainly fewer than 5 times. Birds just don’t seem to fly at car height very often or for very long, and they typically get out of the way quickly when on the ground (George Costanza notwithstanding).
I’m assuming my experience is pretty typical, and the majority of my driving has been in environments where birds were pretty typically abundant. If we say I’ve hit 5 birds in 25 years (again, a number that seems high), maybe we can extrapolate that 20% of drivers would hit a bird in a year. With 242 million drivers in the US, that would be 48.4 million birds killed, and again, that’s using a number that seems high in my experience.
I would be curious to see the source on those estimates and how they reached their numbers.
Per driver is an incorrect assumption. It's would need to be per mile driven.
It would then need to be broken down by vehicle type by size and mass. For example I would not be surprised if semis aren't the majority of vehicle bird deaths.
Are windows other collisions? I think we had 3-6 birds die hitting windows just this last year. Put up some window stickers hoping for a better result, but I have to think windows kill more than all others combined.
Like these people even care about wildlife. They would rather pump oil and leak in to the ocean if it meant they get to still drive gas guzzling cars polluting the Earth
Humans allow cats to breed out of control because they’re stupid.
Humans don't "allow cats to breed". Cats breed whether you want them to or not, often well outside the purvey of people.
What humans have done is to obliterate the rest of the ecosystem. No predatory birds or snakes. No legions of field critters. No native plant life.
Bobcats and pumas were natives of the Texas heartland for hundreds of thousands of years before humans arrived and they got on just fine. Much better at killing wildlife than any Maine Coon, too. You didn't need the SPCA snipping their nutsacks to keep them in check. No more than you needed a breeding program for ground squirrels or passenger pigeons to keep their population size up.
Domestic cats' population is orders of magnitude larger than the native cats population was or is.
While you're correct that humans are also devastating the habitats of native birds, and that that is likely a (much?) larger effect, the invasive species that is the domestic housecat is also talking a toll of a couple billion birds per year.
There are multiple well-regarded studies providing those numbers. You choosing to disbelieve them is about as valid as believing vaccinations are more harmful than diseases, that climate change is a hoax, or that illegal immigrants are responsible for the housing shortage.
Domestic cats’ population is orders of magnitude larger than the native cats population was or is.
We've demolished the ecosystem of the native cat, so its no surprise they're at the brink of extinction in the modern day. I haven't seen any numbers on wild cats prior to the arrival of European settlers. But given the lack of demographic analysis, I'm betting these figures have enormous error bars, even assuming you're conjecture is correct.
Might not help that predatory birds and wolves have also been virtually wiped out. So domestic cats have no natural predators. But - again - that's not due to the cat population. It's due to the human population. Cats aren't the ones hunting wolves with sniper rifles out of helicopters.
the invasive species that is the domestic housecat is also talking a toll of a couple billion birds per year.
Habitat destruction has consistently been the primary cause of population decline, dating back to the extinction of the passenger pigeon. Housecats aren't killing birds at a meaningfully faster rate than prior era natural predators. Bird breeding is whats on the decline, with an enormous part of that decline coming from the decline in the insect and plant population that birds subsist on.
The fixation on cats is one more example of the personalization of an industrial extinction event. You're deflected from blaming pesticide manufacturers and real estate developers, so that you can scream your head off at your neighbor's SPCA rescue. Killing all the housecats will not bring back the bird population because housecats aren't the ones destroying the habitats birds need to hunt and breed.
You choosing to disbelieve them is about as valid as believing vaccinations are more harmful than diseases, that climate change is a hoax, or that illegal immigrants are responsible for the housing shortage.
Blaming cats for the declining bird population is exactly like blaming immigrants for the housing shortage. These are practically one-to-one comparisons.
You’re deflected from blaming pesticide >manufacturers and real estate developers, so that >you can scream your head off at your neighbor’s >SPCA rescue.
I literally said that habitat destruction was a larger effect, you just chose not to quote that part of what I said.
I haven’t seen any numbers on wild cats prior to the >arrival of European settlers. But given the lack of >demographic analysis, I’m betting these figures >have enormous error bars, even assuming you’re >conjecture is correct.
For bobcats, wiki cites a journal from 1996 that said population density of bobcats varied from 1-38 per 25 sq km (numbers from surveys in the 80s, when I read the journal). Making an assumption that pre-European settler numbers averaged out across North American habitats to be more like the 38, and given that the lower 48 is ~8 million sq km, that would make the pre-1500s bobcat population ~12 million. The estimates for the current free roaming domestic housecat is about 100 million.
You mentioned a couple other types of cats, but mountain lions are bigger and not the ones preying on small birds. Ocelots are more akin to the domestic cat, but their native range within the United States is much smaller (AZ to LA), with large portions of that area probably not able to support nearly as many animals. But even if I generously said there were another 12 million ocelots in the US, you'd still be only at a quarter of the current domestic cat population.
domestic cats have no natural predators. But again >- that’s not due to the cat population. It’s due to the >human population.
No. It's due to the fact that they are not native to the United States. They don't have natural predators because they aren't naturally here.
Your visceral defense of housecats is just another example of the hypocrisy of humans. Everyone is willing to sacrifice the desires of someone else. No one is ever willing to give up their own destructive vices though. I didn't even say people shouldn't own them! I just said they should keep them indoors. Obviously, that's not what cats want. Cats want to go outside and explore....and kill small animals. Because they are naturally predators and it's their nature. But if you want to take responsibility for your personal impact, you would keep it indoors.
And again, while I agree that the industrial amounts of habitat destruction is a bigger effect, it doesn't change the fact that the main impact you as an individual can have/ affect, is reining in your cute murder bot.
Those bird deaths by cats are exaggerated. The math doesn't add up. Most cats live near human habitats and the birds that hang around human urban and suburban areas are not anywhere close to being endangered. Also, feral cats are nocturnal while most birds are daytime animals.
They are not exaggerated. In my area I used to have a flock of tiny sparrows that would fill up entire hedges before the locals befriended like 7 cats. Now I never see sparrows here anymore.
that's weird. i live in an area with several outdoor cats, including my own, and have seen more birds here than i did 6 years ago and all the local ecologists document way more bird traffic than there was years ago due to our warming climate... weird.
Humans buy homes and flatten entire ecosystems with concrete. Your in-ground swimming pool and gasolines of de-weeding sprays across the Bermuda Grass lawn do more to kill native species than any house pet.
I think it’s worth it. It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some bird deaths every single year so that we can have cats. That’s a prudent deal. It is rational.
I just think its crazy to roll into an empty field, drain it, sterilize it, drop down thousands of miles of concrete, clear cut the surrounding area, erect hundreds upon hundreds of giant heavily insulated homes, throw up power lines, build fences, spray pesticides, run high speed traffic 24/7/365, hand kids bb-guns and slingshots and bottle rockets...
and then explain the extinction-level drop in bird life by pointing to house cats.
How many native species did you have to kill to make the tabby the apex predator of your region?
It is indeed crazy how an invasive specie of hunters can wipe out entire species of pray. That's kind of how invasive species work, that's why it's bad to have an invasive specie. Did you think scientists were just guessing why the birds suddenly disappear? There are ways to measure it, you know.
Cats are native to very, very narrow slice of Northern Africa, and only spread around with human. I don't even think it's possible to be native to any biome, like, on principal.
Edit for clarity: we're talking about species here, not genus or family.
there are also 100s of small wild cats native to various parts of the world.
they are however, very rare to see so people are clueless that they exist. Bobcats are native to my area, but most people are extremely luck if they EVER see one their entire lifetime in the wild. I spend hours outdoors every week and I've seen maybe 1-2 in my entire lifetime.
They are incredibly reclusive animals. but people only ever think about animals they do see.
Graph would be better if feral cats were separated from pet cats. As the vast majority of predation comes from those feral cats.
And then there's a few other factors to consider, like cats mostly hunting weaker and sick birds that are less likely to make it to their next breeding season anyway, Vs collisions that will effect all birds pretty equally no matter how strong and healthy they are, so cat predation would have a lower effect on actual population levels.
The reason they are the same group is that feral cats result from domestic cats, if there were not domestic cats, we would not have feral cats. They are not wild, native cats.
There would be no reason to split it, the populations are linked. It's better if people understand the issue with invasive species, even if we love the invasive and feel like we personally treat them responsibly.
And domestic cats are a result of humans, so you could just lump all of that under humans, but that would be less useful. Because the point of these days visualisations is to present the data usefully.
Separating them would show people that if you want to combat the problem it's better to support trap, neuter, release programs, than to say not adopt a domestic cat.
Who's saying don't adopt cats. You should totally adopt cats, cats are amazing pets, adopting from a shelter is the best place to get one. Spay neuter programs are the best way to control feral populations since there is no way to eradicate feral cats while allowing pet populations. Pet populations will ensure feral cats remain endemic forever.
That doesn't stop that the entire issue of feral cats and pet cats are linked, and also linked to bird predation. The US as a society has chosen pet cats over wild birds. Some other nations handle by culling, like Australia, or new Zealand now.
That's my point, we should adopt cats, which is why presenting data as "cats bad" is not useful or productive. Separating the data to show it's feral cats that's are the real issue, is more useful because it lets us push the point that we need to deal with stray cats, which is what's important.
since there is no way to eradicate feral cats while allowing pet populations. Pet populations will ensure feral cats remain endemic forever.
Exactly, so the choice is either get rid of pets, or deal with feral cats. So we should present the data in a way that shows pets aren't the real problem.
Yes, they are linked, but again, that's not the point, pet cats are linked to humans, but a graph that just lumps all that data in together isn't useful. The point of data visualisation is to present the data usefully.
Is the data presenting as cats are bad? I see the data is pointing out how many bird deaths in the US are caused by different things. I'm pretty sure it's about turbines because no one cares how many birds cats kill.
Domestic cats are bad for wild bird populations, unequivocally, whether they are pets or feral. Like I totally get what you are saying though, and you're right, I'm pretty sure one of those studies points out feral cats kill birds at a rate of 3 to1 compared to pets. But those feral populations don't exist without the domestic pets which are uncontrolled beyond a county level in most places. At best spay/neuter programs reduce the number of unhealthy animals, but the US has kinda chosen to allow the nearly uncontrolled population of feral cats (which result entirely from the pet industry) to exist and kill birds.
I mean when when we try to control them we are more trying to reduce the amount of nuisance feral cats represent, they aren't like feral dogs, which the US treats very aggressively in most cases. Feral spay/neuter programs understand that the cats will always exist where there's food resources, so keeping those populations under control and healthier is the main purpose. They don't do the forests and shit, and they don't care how many birds those cats kill.
You can realize your indoor only cats are not necessarily killing any birds, so the birds your cats kill is 0. Responsibly owning indoor pets is the best way to do it, but again, we don't care in the US how many birds cats kill, it's a passing figure to us. Not like New Zealand where they are very protective of their wild birds.
I think you are equivocating two distinct uses of the term domestic. A domestic cat is a cat that is also a pet, and a domestic species is a species that is suited to life with humans. All feral cats are domestic by the second definition but not the first. If you take the second definition, then you are correct but only trivially. If you take the first definition, then you are historically incorrect. Either way, I don't think you have a very strong point.
We, humanity, domesticated wild cats into pets and spread the throughout the world. "Feral" cats only exist as a result of "Domestic" cats.
That is not something you can equivocate, there is no separation, they are the same species, the feral population would not exist without the domesticated versions, like feral hogs.
If your point is that all feral cats are members of a domesticated species, then you are correct only by definition. If your point is that all feral cats come from pet cats, then you are factually incorrect.
The relationship between cats and humans is the exact defenition of domestication. All feral cats come from humans moving non native cat species to areas around the world, cats are African. The words feral and domestic are linked. And yes, to answer your last question all feral cats are a result of domestic cats, the term feral only exists in relation to term. Feel free to hit me with sources on this. If they aren't feral they are wild.
Let's try not to take things personally here. I'm not twisting words, and I'm not claiming that you are either. I'm pretty confident the equivocation is an honest mistake.
We don't disagree on the definition of a domesticated species here. We don't disagree about whether cats are domesticated or not. The original comment by gmtom said, "graph would be better if feral cats were separated from pet cats. As the vast majority of predation comes from those feral cats." Note that the categories we are discussing here are feral cats and pet cats, not feral cats and domestic cats.
You respond by saying, "The reason they are the same group is that feral cats result from domestic cats, if there were not domestic cats, we would not have feral cats. They are not wild, native cats." The categories here have changed to feral cats and domestic cats when the original comment was about feral cats and pet cats.
You can conclude from this line of reasoning that separating the graph into the categories of feral cats and domesticated cats is inappropriate, but you cannot use this line of reasoning to conclude that it is inappropriate to separate the graph into the categories of feral cats and pet cats.
Using this argument to suggest that it is inappropriate to separate the graph into the categories of feral cats and pet cats is to equivocate two distinct usages of the term domestic. One usage means "a member of a domesticated species" and the other usage means "pet" or something like "non-feral domesticated." These are clearly distinct usages. In one case, the categories overlap, while they are mutually exclusive in the other.
Feel free to hit me with sources on this. If they aren't feral they are wild.
I see what you're saying, I'm using domestic and pet interchangeably. That's because pets are domestic animals, the domestic cat is named that because it was domesticated. These words can all be used at the same time and are. Pets, domesticated cats, whose species common name is the domestic cat, are responsible for all feral populations in the US. There is no source for feral cats beyond the introduction of them by people. Which occurred through both pets and working animals in farms, shipping, etc.
I'm arguing with the other user that the graph isn't actually saying anything about cats, it's talking about windmills and the fact that pet domestic cats are responsible for 1/3rd of the bird killings on that graph is meaningless because the feral population does not exist without the domestic pet population of domestic cats.
The whole point of the graph is pointing out that no one gives a shit about how many birds cats kill, so why are we arguing about windmills using birds.
the studies on which these claims are based are poor. but they generated sensenationalist headlines... and for the reading public that's all that counts, sensationalism. they basically took a small sample of the study and generalizzed it across the entire nation... which is absurd as populations and enviorments are radically different. cats live where people live... they don't live in yellowstone.
the more sober studies on the issue basically show that whiel the vast majority of cats kill some birds, most are not bird serial killers. a small percentage however, are.
Missing is the deaths due to coal and deforestation.
I guess this is direct deaths.
The low and high estimate for cats are so far apart they may as well just shrug.
that is cats for you, they kill when they feel like it
Yeah that's exactly what I thought.
I mean I find 5-10 dove and robin corpses on my tiny lot every summer. Cats are very clearly an issue.
I've had several outdoor cats, and only 1 would actively hunt, and in all these years I only found a single dead bird. 3-4 outdoor cars on my block, never found anything dead. I don't get it when people say cats are such a scrouge.
Maybe they're so well fed now days they don't bother to hunt? Seems people used to be meaner to strays, haven't seen a skinny/sickly cat in ages.
I think the point that most people miss is that these studies mix together domestic and unowned/ feral cats. It is highly likely that our domestic cats who are fed well don't hunt as much
Oh! Counting feral cats makes a huge difference. I was only looking at the issue from a pet-centric POV.
So letting my fixed/neutered pet out, no big deal. Makes way more sense now.
You should keep your pet indoors too. Lots of well-fed pet cats like to hunt small mammals and birds because it's what they're wired to do. Many many housecats bring their owners gifts of dead birds and mice.
I find at least 5 dead birds every year. I have blink camera videos of the local cats stalking the birds.
More than anything else, it's inconsiderate to your neighbors who might not want your cats on their property. My wife and I take great joy in watching the local doves nest and raise chicks, and we will absolutely defend them from feral pests and outdoor "pets" alike.
Around me they mostly kill mice, chipmunks and baby squirrels.
"Other collision's" kinda takes blame away from what's happening, its glass windows. This from wiki: "a 2024 study on the survival rate of bird-building collision victims indicates that previous research was vastly underestimating the number of deaths caused by collisions, and in actuality well over 1 billion birds die from collisions in the United States every year."
Fun fact, there's a layer they can put in glass that makes it visible to birds but not us, but its more expensive, so it isn't used most places!
Do you have a link to more info about the layer product? My google fu is failing me.
Not affiliated but this website is a perfect example: https://www.birdshades.com/
There's a couple of other websites selling similar things, you can also buy UV film yourself to apply to your own windows. I first learned about it on Grand Designs!
Edit: https://www.yorkshirewater.com/news-media/news-articles/2024/tophill-low-s-bird-friendly-architecture-featured-on-grand-designs/
Link to the grand designs build where they call it ornilux glass.
Awesome. Thanks for replying!
Oh god, another time I see that cat killing birds statistics.
Yes, simplified thinking here led to Mao killing off sparrow to protect crops only for those crops to be eaten by insects that otherwise would have been managed by said sparrows…
There's no denying that outdoor cats kill birds but you're right that those numbers are inflated. Plus, the problem with looking back 70-100 years back isn't just methodology but it's the fact that stray and feral cats are much better maintained in the last few decades. It's a problem many counties actually bothered to tackle with high profile neutering campaigns and such. So, I bet the numbers are probably lower than collisions at this point.
Context also matters a lot-- cats are, like us, an invasive species. The most evidence of it being a problem are in places where there were no major predators for birds (mostly thinking of islands like New Zealand). But that's less a matter of bird deaths so much as a matter of man made ecological changes leading to endangerment.
It's also weird how much easier it should be to just not have clear glass skyscrapers murdering thousands of birds vs what, killing off cats? What even is the end game to that statistic, lol.
I think it's to show that bird deaths from turbines is insignificant
Thank you! I have been puzzled about that for years.
https://old.lemmy.world/comment/21386013
This sounds like the type of denial one hears from. climate change deniers except with cats instead.
Just say you have outdoor cats and refuse to accept anything that says it's bad.
I don't have a cat. Nor a dog. I do have a book on bird watching and binoculars though.
No need to be an asshole. There is a large cultural difference between the US and EU on this issue. Expert opinion is also divided, of low quality and influenced by local opinion.
Americans tend to think in moral absolutes about everything, and from their moral absolutism have an unwavering delusional confidence that they are 'correct' because of their feelings. It's why we are so backwards in so many ways.
Birds good, cats bad. Full stop. If you don't agree you are evil and clearly support bird genocide!
No other possibility is allowed in the discussion, like understanding that systems are complex and/or that not all cats are the same, or that the studies often quoted on these issues are flawed and problematic in many ways. And that the general solution to the problem... the control of the feral cat population, is one both 'sides' already agree on. Because there is no 'drama' in that. It's much more dramatic to scream at every cat owner they are a evil person if they allow their cat outside at any time ever.
Given I see it the same as climate denial, I see no reason not to be an asshole to either type of a anti-science tomfoolery.
People are taking this really personally, the chart isn't even throwing shade at cats. It's saying look how small this is compared to something basically no one cares about in the US. Domestic and the resulting feral cats are a human created invasive species issue that way worse and more destructive than we give it credit for because we love cats.
I'm tangentially involved enough in local spay/neuter programs and you can see these consequences locally wherever you live.
Like I love cats, I have 4 indoor, no outdoor animals, but people are really trying to act like feral cat predation is no big deal. It is a huge deal, we just don't care, and if we don't care about a billion birds getting killed by cats, and a quarter billion by windows, why the hell would we care about the 7 that windmills killed in comparison.
Wind turbines kill as many birds in the US as the feral cats in my COUNTY do.
Ironically this comment is far far more like the attitude of climate change deniers than anything else that has been said in this thread.
Yep, there we go. Projection is the final stage of denial. Congrats you did it.
People who vaccinate at the true menace! This is why I assume people are stupid. Few people are willing to critically examine their own behavior when called out on it.
I'm being called and asshole in this thread and you don't see me denying that shit. I own it.
If only you were self aware.
why would you have to examine your own behavior if you are right and everyone else is stupid and wrong?
Look you did it again! Good job staying consistent
So what's your take on my comment here:
https://old.lemmy.world/comment/21386013
One desd bird doesn't mean it only killed one. Also, the other comments that it's feral cats is spot on.
One concern is well fed outdoor cats normalized people who have feral cats , especially the kinds they dump a bag of food every now and then and think they mean they aren't part of the problem.
And in general, people should not allow their pets outside. We do it for cats but not other animals because people think their cats is never a nuisance; bird killer or otherwise.
All the science says don't let your cat out. Pointing at one specific stat and ripping it apart and claiming victory is exactly how we allowed climate change to just slip away for over 60 years now.
It's not a problem if I dump some motor oil into the ground because oil tankers leaker more! Either too contribute or too don't and I'm going to be a dick to anyone that contributes no matter how little.
Not really, no.
Cat wellbeing doesn't say that. Cat depression rates in high enriched indoor environments neither. Keeping the cat indoors is like keeping the people forced to stay in home during Covid - it has negative wellbeing consequences.
What the heck are you talking about? What stat? There are studies that show that the cats kill mostly rodents (Lowes et al.), and that average bird prey is old or sick. The biggest problem with bird population dropping is not invasive cat species, but invasive human species.
Bird loss is a function of habitat shrinking, climat change, pesticides and pollution. Any fix must focus on that instead of a cheap scapegoat. Do you know how I can tell that? Because the birds are dropping world wide (over 66% of bird species are in decline), outside of outdoor cat heavy areas you seem to want to focus on.
Plastic straws didn't cause the climate change.
Fun fact: windmills have a speaker on then that emits a high pitched chirp. Humans cant hear it, and birds avoid it.
They also stop or reduce turbine speed during peak migration season, and scientists have found that painting one of the blades a dark color prompts the birds to fly further away from the turbine.
They do kill a lot of birds though, and bats. An absolute fuckton of bats. My partner did turbine strike studies in college, and said that the number of bat deaths is really disheartening. Bats in my area like to find the tallest "snag" to roost in... Guess what a wind turbine looks like to them...
I was lying about the speakers
Forget the "also" then.
Domestic cats are not native to the US. Their presence is absolutely human caused. And lack of efforts to contain them is also the fault of humans. People should not feed the strays in their neighborhoods. People should not let their own cats outside. Etc.
It's also Cats vs Collisions.
Hit a car? Hit a building? Hit a windmill.
The fifth floor of our office building regularly has greasy pigeon marks from some poor skyrat thinking the windows that are A. moderately reflective B. dirty AF and C. have never been open are all of a sudden clear paths to the inside.
My somehow-now-conservative mom lives in the midwest and will rant long and hard about how windmills make the soil under them "dirty" because they "leak oil from the blades" and "all the farmers know it's true"
I once considered this lady smart, smh
I'm a soil scientist. Want some talking points lol.
One of her friends probably listened to a talk show where two people bitched about it for 3 minutes and played some devil's advocate. I swear they use the conservative talk shows to train to become horrible people.
I misread as "Cars (domestic and feral)" and was very concerned about the idea of feral cars XD
Self driving Teslas?
Waymos probably do kill a ton of urban wildlife.
That's fake, this is real and legal.
The car from h*rry pott*r
or Christine
Ask any groundskeeper for a glass building. You find dead birds every day.
Even the low estimate for birds killed by collisions with cars seems high to me. I’ve been driving for over 25 years and think in that time I’ve only hit birds maybe twice, certainly fewer than 5 times. Birds just don’t seem to fly at car height very often or for very long, and they typically get out of the way quickly when on the ground (George Costanza notwithstanding).
I’m assuming my experience is pretty typical, and the majority of my driving has been in environments where birds were pretty typically abundant. If we say I’ve hit 5 birds in 25 years (again, a number that seems high), maybe we can extrapolate that 20% of drivers would hit a bird in a year. With 242 million drivers in the US, that would be 48.4 million birds killed, and again, that’s using a number that seems high in my experience.
I would be curious to see the source on those estimates and how they reached their numbers.
Per driver is an incorrect assumption. It's would need to be per mile driven.
It would then need to be broken down by vehicle type by size and mass. For example I would not be surprised if semis aren't the majority of vehicle bird deaths.
Are windows other collisions? I think we had 3-6 birds die hitting windows just this last year. Put up some window stickers hoping for a better result, but I have to think windows kill more than all others combined.
Trump's giant skyscrapers covered in windows probably kill way more birds than windmills.
Should we break all Trump's windows to save the birds. Inquiring minds want to know!
Use the buildings to kill all the pigeons and supply Trump Chicken outlets.
Wait, is hunting no longer considered a "human-caused death"? Or were windmills really a bigger killer?
But yea, outdoor domestic cats are fucking menace to birds and plenty of other small animals.
I hope it's not included in 'Other collisions '.
"This bird died from colliding with a bullet"
Like these people even care about wildlife. They would rather pump oil and leak in to the ocean if it meant they get to still drive gas guzzling cars polluting the Earth
679,089 seems oddly specific for an estimate
So we shouldn't use cat-butter engines to generate electricity?
This doesn't even take into account the other small animals they kill
Don’t forget about 9.5 billion chickens slaughtered by humans annually in the USA alone
Chickens generally don't have to worry about windmills.
My pet chicken has been really worried about windmills since it started watching Fox News
:-/
Humans allow cats to breed out of control because they're stupid. It's human-caused.
Humans don't "allow cats to breed". Cats breed whether you want them to or not, often well outside the purvey of people.
What humans have done is to obliterate the rest of the ecosystem. No predatory birds or snakes. No legions of field critters. No native plant life.
Bobcats and pumas were natives of the Texas heartland for hundreds of thousands of years before humans arrived and they got on just fine. Much better at killing wildlife than any Maine Coon, too. You didn't need the SPCA snipping their nutsacks to keep them in check. No more than you needed a breeding program for ground squirrels or passenger pigeons to keep their population size up.
Domestic cats' population is orders of magnitude larger than the native cats population was or is.
While you're correct that humans are also devastating the habitats of native birds, and that that is likely a (much?) larger effect, the invasive species that is the domestic housecat is also talking a toll of a couple billion birds per year.
There are multiple well-regarded studies providing those numbers. You choosing to disbelieve them is about as valid as believing vaccinations are more harmful than diseases, that climate change is a hoax, or that illegal immigrants are responsible for the housing shortage.
We've demolished the ecosystem of the native cat, so its no surprise they're at the brink of extinction in the modern day. I haven't seen any numbers on wild cats prior to the arrival of European settlers. But given the lack of demographic analysis, I'm betting these figures have enormous error bars, even assuming you're conjecture is correct.
Might not help that predatory birds and wolves have also been virtually wiped out. So domestic cats have no natural predators. But - again - that's not due to the cat population. It's due to the human population. Cats aren't the ones hunting wolves with sniper rifles out of helicopters.
Habitat destruction has consistently been the primary cause of population decline, dating back to the extinction of the passenger pigeon. Housecats aren't killing birds at a meaningfully faster rate than prior era natural predators. Bird breeding is whats on the decline, with an enormous part of that decline coming from the decline in the insect and plant population that birds subsist on.
The fixation on cats is one more example of the personalization of an industrial extinction event. You're deflected from blaming pesticide manufacturers and real estate developers, so that you can scream your head off at your neighbor's SPCA rescue. Killing all the housecats will not bring back the bird population because housecats aren't the ones destroying the habitats birds need to hunt and breed.
Blaming cats for the declining bird population is exactly like blaming immigrants for the housing shortage. These are practically one-to-one comparisons.
I literally said that habitat destruction was a larger effect, you just chose not to quote that part of what I said.
For bobcats, wiki cites a journal from 1996 that said population density of bobcats varied from 1-38 per 25 sq km (numbers from surveys in the 80s, when I read the journal). Making an assumption that pre-European settler numbers averaged out across North American habitats to be more like the 38, and given that the lower 48 is ~8 million sq km, that would make the pre-1500s bobcat population ~12 million. The estimates for the current free roaming domestic housecat is about 100 million. You mentioned a couple other types of cats, but mountain lions are bigger and not the ones preying on small birds. Ocelots are more akin to the domestic cat, but their native range within the United States is much smaller (AZ to LA), with large portions of that area probably not able to support nearly as many animals. But even if I generously said there were another 12 million ocelots in the US, you'd still be only at a quarter of the current domestic cat population.
No. It's due to the fact that they are not native to the United States. They don't have natural predators because they aren't naturally here.
Your visceral defense of housecats is just another example of the hypocrisy of humans. Everyone is willing to sacrifice the desires of someone else. No one is ever willing to give up their own destructive vices though. I didn't even say people shouldn't own them! I just said they should keep them indoors. Obviously, that's not what cats want. Cats want to go outside and explore....and kill small animals. Because they are naturally predators and it's their nature. But if you want to take responsibility for your personal impact, you would keep it indoors.
And again, while I agree that the industrial amounts of habitat destruction is a bigger effect, it doesn't change the fact that the main impact you as an individual can have/ affect, is reining in your cute murder bot.
Those bird deaths by cats are exaggerated. The math doesn't add up. Most cats live near human habitats and the birds that hang around human urban and suburban areas are not anywhere close to being endangered. Also, feral cats are nocturnal while most birds are daytime animals.
They are not exaggerated. In my area I used to have a flock of tiny sparrows that would fill up entire hedges before the locals befriended like 7 cats. Now I never see sparrows here anymore.
And who the hell cares they're not endangered?
that's weird. i live in an area with several outdoor cats, including my own, and have seen more birds here than i did 6 years ago and all the local ecologists document way more bird traffic than there was years ago due to our warming climate... weird.
Humans buy cats as pets and let them roam outside where they wreck havoc on the local wildlife.
Humans buy homes and flatten entire ecosystems with concrete. Your in-ground swimming pool and gasolines of de-weeding sprays across the Bermuda Grass lawn do more to kill native species than any house pet.
I am pretty sure all of those pale in comparison to environmental pollution and destruction of nature reserves.
Facts are facts, I guess.
In 40 years of me having cats, my cats didn't kill anyone while living full happy spoiled lives.
I just think its crazy to roll into an empty field, drain it, sterilize it, drop down thousands of miles of concrete, clear cut the surrounding area, erect hundreds upon hundreds of giant heavily insulated homes, throw up power lines, build fences, spray pesticides, run high speed traffic 24/7/365, hand kids bb-guns and slingshots and bottle rockets...
and then explain the extinction-level drop in bird life by pointing to house cats.
How many native species did you have to kill to make the tabby the apex predator of your region?
It is indeed crazy how an invasive specie of hunters can wipe out entire species of pray. That's kind of how invasive species work, that's why it's bad to have an invasive specie. Did you think scientists were just guessing why the birds suddenly disappear? There are ways to measure it, you know.
Cats are native to every continent and virtually every biome.
Walmarts are not.
Cats are native to very, very narrow slice of Northern Africa, and only spread around with human. I don't even think it's possible to be native to any biome, like, on principal.
Edit for clarity: we're talking about species here, not genus or family.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Distribution-of-big-cat-ranges-and-study-locations-Global-distribution-of-big-cat_fig2_356499567
Well, if you don't think it's possible, I guess that settles it
there are also 100s of small wild cats native to various parts of the world.
they are however, very rare to see so people are clueless that they exist. Bobcats are native to my area, but most people are extremely luck if they EVER see one their entire lifetime in the wild. I spend hours outdoors every week and I've seen maybe 1-2 in my entire lifetime.
They are incredibly reclusive animals. but people only ever think about animals they do see.
Do you know what "big cat" means, and why the word big is there? That was a rhetorical question
That was a polite way to tell you that you talk obvious bollocks, but I guess this subtlety is also lost on you
Would be nice if there's data that excludes feral cats, feral cats killing birds are just the natural outcome of the food chain.
Also other collision of separating high rise glass windows vs airplanes
Not if cats are non native to that environment and (often) don't eat their kill. Bird killing is fun for cats, regardless of ownership or hunger
Cats are an invasive species in the American continents.
Once they start living in the wild it's part of the new nature now. What's done is done, unless you are proposing we start culling them.
The only thing we can do reasonably is stop abandoning cats to prevent artificial increase of feral cats population
Graph would be better if feral cats were separated from pet cats. As the vast majority of predation comes from those feral cats.
And then there's a few other factors to consider, like cats mostly hunting weaker and sick birds that are less likely to make it to their next breeding season anyway, Vs collisions that will effect all birds pretty equally no matter how strong and healthy they are, so cat predation would have a lower effect on actual population levels.
The reason they are the same group is that feral cats result from domestic cats, if there were not domestic cats, we would not have feral cats. They are not wild, native cats.
There would be no reason to split it, the populations are linked. It's better if people understand the issue with invasive species, even if we love the invasive and feel like we personally treat them responsibly.
And domestic cats are a result of humans, so you could just lump all of that under humans, but that would be less useful. Because the point of these days visualisations is to present the data usefully.
Separating them would show people that if you want to combat the problem it's better to support trap, neuter, release programs, than to say not adopt a domestic cat.
Who's saying don't adopt cats. You should totally adopt cats, cats are amazing pets, adopting from a shelter is the best place to get one. Spay neuter programs are the best way to control feral populations since there is no way to eradicate feral cats while allowing pet populations. Pet populations will ensure feral cats remain endemic forever.
That doesn't stop that the entire issue of feral cats and pet cats are linked, and also linked to bird predation. The US as a society has chosen pet cats over wild birds. Some other nations handle by culling, like Australia, or new Zealand now.
That's my point, we should adopt cats, which is why presenting data as "cats bad" is not useful or productive. Separating the data to show it's feral cats that's are the real issue, is more useful because it lets us push the point that we need to deal with stray cats, which is what's important.
Exactly, so the choice is either get rid of pets, or deal with feral cats. So we should present the data in a way that shows pets aren't the real problem.
Yes, they are linked, but again, that's not the point, pet cats are linked to humans, but a graph that just lumps all that data in together isn't useful. The point of data visualisation is to present the data usefully.
Is the data presenting as cats are bad? I see the data is pointing out how many bird deaths in the US are caused by different things. I'm pretty sure it's about turbines because no one cares how many birds cats kill.
https://www.statista.com/chart/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/
Domestic cats are bad for wild bird populations, unequivocally, whether they are pets or feral. Like I totally get what you are saying though, and you're right, I'm pretty sure one of those studies points out feral cats kill birds at a rate of 3 to1 compared to pets. But those feral populations don't exist without the domestic pets which are uncontrolled beyond a county level in most places. At best spay/neuter programs reduce the number of unhealthy animals, but the US has kinda chosen to allow the nearly uncontrolled population of feral cats (which result entirely from the pet industry) to exist and kill birds.
I mean when when we try to control them we are more trying to reduce the amount of nuisance feral cats represent, they aren't like feral dogs, which the US treats very aggressively in most cases. Feral spay/neuter programs understand that the cats will always exist where there's food resources, so keeping those populations under control and healthier is the main purpose. They don't do the forests and shit, and they don't care how many birds those cats kill.
You can realize your indoor only cats are not necessarily killing any birds, so the birds your cats kill is 0. Responsibly owning indoor pets is the best way to do it, but again, we don't care in the US how many birds cats kill, it's a passing figure to us. Not like New Zealand where they are very protective of their wild birds.
I think you are equivocating two distinct uses of the term domestic. A domestic cat is a cat that is also a pet, and a domestic species is a species that is suited to life with humans. All feral cats are domestic by the second definition but not the first. If you take the second definition, then you are correct but only trivially. If you take the first definition, then you are historically incorrect. Either way, I don't think you have a very strong point.
We, humanity, domesticated wild cats into pets and spread the throughout the world. "Feral" cats only exist as a result of "Domestic" cats.
That is not something you can equivocate, there is no separation, they are the same species, the feral population would not exist without the domesticated versions, like feral hogs.
That's not true. Cats domesticated themselves.
That's not what domestication means.
If your point is that all feral cats are members of a domesticated species, then you are correct only by definition. If your point is that all feral cats come from pet cats, then you are factually incorrect.
The relationship between cats and humans is the exact defenition of domestication. All feral cats come from humans moving non native cat species to areas around the world, cats are African. The words feral and domestic are linked. And yes, to answer your last question all feral cats are a result of domestic cats, the term feral only exists in relation to term. Feel free to hit me with sources on this. If they aren't feral they are wild.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_cat
I've got another resource on domestication to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_cat
I'm not the one twisting language here.
Let's try not to take things personally here. I'm not twisting words, and I'm not claiming that you are either. I'm pretty confident the equivocation is an honest mistake.
We don't disagree on the definition of a domesticated species here. We don't disagree about whether cats are domesticated or not. The original comment by gmtom said, "graph would be better if feral cats were separated from pet cats. As the vast majority of predation comes from those feral cats." Note that the categories we are discussing here are feral cats and pet cats, not feral cats and domestic cats.
You respond by saying, "The reason they are the same group is that feral cats result from domestic cats, if there were not domestic cats, we would not have feral cats. They are not wild, native cats." The categories here have changed to feral cats and domestic cats when the original comment was about feral cats and pet cats.
You can conclude from this line of reasoning that separating the graph into the categories of feral cats and domesticated cats is inappropriate, but you cannot use this line of reasoning to conclude that it is inappropriate to separate the graph into the categories of feral cats and pet cats.
Using this argument to suggest that it is inappropriate to separate the graph into the categories of feral cats and pet cats is to equivocate two distinct usages of the term domestic. One usage means "a member of a domesticated species" and the other usage means "pet" or something like "non-feral domesticated." These are clearly distinct usages. In one case, the categories overlap, while they are mutually exclusive in the other.
We don't disagree on the facts here, so no number of sources could resolve this discussion one way or another.
I see what you're saying, I'm using domestic and pet interchangeably. That's because pets are domestic animals, the domestic cat is named that because it was domesticated. These words can all be used at the same time and are. Pets, domesticated cats, whose species common name is the domestic cat, are responsible for all feral populations in the US. There is no source for feral cats beyond the introduction of them by people. Which occurred through both pets and working animals in farms, shipping, etc.
I'm arguing with the other user that the graph isn't actually saying anything about cats, it's talking about windmills and the fact that pet domestic cats are responsible for 1/3rd of the bird killings on that graph is meaningless because the feral population does not exist without the domestic pet population of domestic cats.
The whole point of the graph is pointing out that no one gives a shit about how many birds cats kill, so why are we arguing about windmills using birds.
I'm not sure if we still disagree.
the studies on which these claims are based are poor. but they generated sensenationalist headlines... and for the reading public that's all that counts, sensationalism. they basically took a small sample of the study and generalizzed it across the entire nation... which is absurd as populations and enviorments are radically different. cats live where people live... they don't live in yellowstone.
the more sober studies on the issue basically show that whiel the vast majority of cats kill some birds, most are not bird serial killers. a small percentage however, are.
Now compare migratory birds vs nesting. The error bar on these numbers is massive.
Missing these deaths as well. That's 9.5 Billion chickens in a year.