I find the word “disaster” here to be an exaggeration. A well-fed cat is not going to kill that many birds, and the birds themselves know enough to stay out of the way of cats. How many species of birds nest on or “near” the ground can you cite that are truly the prey of domestic cats?
People spread cats because of grain (because of rodents eating grain), and grain has been a huge part of the “natrual order” or human development. And guess what? It still happens. Rodents have spread across the world because of people, and while you might like Black Flag and other toxins in your home, a cat is much more efficient at keeping rodents away.
My cat has a door which lets him in and out at will. When he smells a rodent, he will perch himself inside somewhere, and stay there all night until he catches the thing. Birds are only an idle amusement, and, in fact, have never been his prey.
As pointed out, one main reason that cats were spread is rodent control, which they are pretty good at, this allows much less use of poisons in the environment - and is man using a natural solution to a problem.
For most birds, the domestic cat which is allowed outdoors, is not a big concern. Yes they will kill a few, but in the grand scheme of things birds will adjust to compensate with higher birth rates and different habits which leaves it less exposed. Perhaps the bird population would explode if all cats were removed tomorrow, causing mass starvation in birds from lack of food, like many places have with the deer population. I would WAG is that for most places the birds have already evolved to live around cats, and part of that means a few birds will become cat food.
Here’s a separate question: it’s illegal under ordinary circumstances for Americans to kill migratory birds, per the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. So what is the obligation around restraining your cat? Has anyone ever been prosecuted for letting their cat kill migratory birds?
True - indeed, it’s billions. But it’s hard to see how this is relevant.
They could well contribute to it. There’s nothing in the nature of a cat that tends to avoid killing a bird that’s endangered.
No, they’re killing the ground-nesting birds in particular, some of which (e.g. piping plover, least tern) are endangered.
Hardly the least. Here’s a link that suggests that cats are the second leading cause of bird mortality.
Indeed, an indoor cat has no need of a bell.
If endangered species of rats were suffering from cat predation, we would indeed be saying that. Likewise, if cats were restricting their prey to species such as house sparrows, starlings and canada geese, there would be no concern; unfortunately, they aren’t.
I’ve never seen any evidence that this would be the case. Nor have I heard of this in any of the many areas (e.g. the arctic) where domestic and feral cats are quite rare.
Piping plovers are birds who lay eggs on beaches. Do many beaches sustain feral cat populations? At Plum Island in Newburyport, MA cats are not on the list of things that the nature preserve is concerned about damaging the plover population - unlike say, people stepping on the eggs. (by “on the list” I’m being literal; they have literature for beach goers)
Well, I stand corrected. Thank you for that interesting history. For an entire bird species to be rendered extinct by a single domestic cat, however, must have required some pretty narrow circumstances. Either the cat was extremely violent and predatory, or the bird species was extremely stupid–or just inevitably unadaptive, and incapable of going somewhere where this cat .
After all, birds can fly. They can go high up into places that no cat can get to. What kind of a bird species could have been eliminated by one, single cat?
While it was a beautiful-looking creature, and I regret it’s extinction, I still don’t think we need to keep cats constantly inside solely in order to prevent extinction of any birds. As to my neighbors, maybe if they stopped feeding him they wouldn’t have to thank me. When I lived in the digbat (and kept him inside all the time), he would go crazy–stir crazy–and wouldn’t you too? He’d sit in the window sill and actually chirp at the birds on the fence outside, trying to sound like them. I guess it was his cat-way of saying something like, “Come on in, I won’t hurt you.” Now, when he goes outside, he just ignores them. But when it comes to mice (and one rat) inside his house, he won’t put up with that.
According to your link, that was one ornithologically conscientious cat! I mean, he may have single-pawedly exterminated an extremely rare bird species, but at least he provided reports on it:
I think it must have been some kind of personal feud between the cat and the bird species. They probably had insulted the color of his tail, and then he didn’t just want to eliminated them, he wanted to report to the world that there was a contract out on all Stephens Island wrens. Those he didn’t catch but got word of the contract, skipped town, and now call themselves “Michaels Island wrens.”
Well, to be fair, it’s a pretty extreme example, since it was a relict population of a species that had already been exterminated across most of its original range by imported predators. It’s not exactly fair, however, to characterize a species in this situation as “stupid”, if it’s evolved for millions of years in a place with no land predators.
Clearly, not all birds can fly, and to answer your question, many of the most vulnerable bird species are those which have lost their ability to fly–including the Stephens Island wren.
On the mainland, its probably unlikely that free-roaming domestic cats, by themselves, would be able to drive any birds species to extinction. However, with the ongoing fragmentation of the wilderness by creeping suburban sprawl, those disconnected patches are starting to take on characteristics of island ecologies–a setting in which local populations at least are very vulnerable indeed. David Quammen discusses this phenomenon in his book, The Song of the Dodo.
On the flip side, I actively chase away the cats that wander through our yard, but that doesn’t exactly keep them from coming back.
Maybe he was gunning for that sort of notoriety that one of our fellow Dopers (sorry, can’t remember who) was considering when he thought about trying to find the last baiji dolphin…in order to shoot it.
Then again, that sort of infamy is pretty short-lived, I’d imagine. After all, few people remember Jon Brandsson, Sigurdur Islefsson, and Ketil Ketilsson these days.
And no one missed them at all, except for a few Dopers who started a thread mourning their loss, which was promptly derailed by the Brickers of the world showing up to post, essentially, “Who cares anyway?”
You do realize that all those times you played with your cat, getting it chase the string, or whatever, you were training it to hunt. Since you are the ‘top cat’, you get the first bite of any kill. So you were supposed to eat a bite or two and then let kitty have the rest.
I did have a cat once that was just this side of feral. He never presented his kills to me. He hid them in my house for later eating though. He would get really mad when I found them and threw them out. He came in once with the bird in his mouth and when I bent down to look at it he growled at me to back off. He would eat a few bites of bird but really, there isn’t much meat on a song bird.
You miss my point. In areas where cats regularly kill birds, I strongly suspect birds have evolutionary adjusted for this and now cats taking birds is part of what is needed for a healthy level of bird population. In the arctic where their are no cats there was no such adjustment because there was no pressure from this predator.
I didn’t mean to start an argument :(. Thanks for the replies, guys. I know this sounds absolutely cruel, but uh, do cats prefer live food to say, cat food? Would she rather eat a mouse rather than Meow Mix?
The introduction of non-native cats has occurred far more quickly than evolutionary processes can adapt. This is most evident, again, in island ecologies, where the importation of cats (and, to be fair, other predators such as rats and pigs) drove endemic species to total or near-extinction.
Again, mainland bird species are less likely to risk extinction solely from the actions of an imported predator, but combined with other large-scale stressors (predominantly habitat fragmentation and loss), the impact of additional predation may be greater than you think.
