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by LoSboccacc 2405 days ago
this went from being environmentally sensitive to culling species wholesale real fast

remember last time we culled cats what happened?

2 comments

I don't "remember" what happened last time "we" culled cats, so what happened?

(If you're alluding to the idea that the "black death" plagues were worsened by cat culls, that's an oft-repeated story but somewhat dubious with regard to verifiable facts. Cats themselves can carry the plague bacteria & transmit it to humans – eg https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/08/us/house-cats-spread-huma... – and even regions where cats are superstitiously cherished suffered repeated plague outbreaks.)

lol no

first of all you have to control prey population because pests will balloon with the increased safety and consume resources, strangling the prey population.

secondly if you can't control the whole area Predator population will follow the pest increase, often resulting in larger problems or an out of control spiral of environmental issues

you don't have to go back to pre scientific anecdotes like the stories around the pest, just check the Australia history with cats and rabbits

here's a substantial population study with ferrets in UK https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-011-9965-2

mainland control is only worse

I still can't follow what you meant by the "last time we culled cats". Was that referring to some action by Australians? (Are they the "we"?) Is there a canonical reference to how extensive this "cull" was?

Which "prey" have to be controlled, or else which "pests" will balloon?

Is the capitalization of 'Predator' significant, indicating some sort of sovereignty on a scale matching that of your only other capitalized entities, 'Australia' and 'UK'?

> Australians? (Are they the "we"?)

I also linked a uk study, but this works the same everywhere they tried, including wolves in italy etc

> Which "prey" have to be controlled, or else which "pests" will balloon?

the food chain sits at an equilibrium that's under dampened. the population of opportunistic/scavenger will grow sharply going over capacity. that will cause harm to animals down the food chain (i.e. attack to bird nests) and will cause immigration of nearby predator population, which will again be underdampenend and will grow over capacity.

heck I even linked a paper explaining this, there's plenty references around too.

> Predator

now you're just being an hardass. it was autocorrect.

You've "also linked" a UK study of unclear relevance, but you've still never answered what "cat cull" you were originally referring-to as something we should "remember".

Nor is it clear what's the "prey" and "pest" in the case of house pets. What are you referring-to by those words? Similarly, when you say "this works the same everywhere they tried", what's "this"?

Yes, I'm being a "hardass", because your tone is one of "everybody knows these clear and simple things", but the actual details you've provided are grossly insufficient to know what you're talking about. Even when asked for exact details, you've moved on to other non-responsive digressions.

You are seriously overestimating the clarity of your communication, and overconfident about what anecdotes that others might "remember", and making unwarranted assumptions about what shared-interest/shared-history groups your readers might consider to be part of "we". You're expecting others to intuit lots of specific things in your mind you haven't described in sufficient detail for others to know.

I also don't follow your explanation

Talking about Australia and cats, they have a major issue https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/26/asia/feral-cats-australia..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_in_Australia

Domesticated cats are not a native predator species in North America. Populations of various wildlife, especially songbirds, are well below their historical level in large part due to this predation by an invasive species.
What happened?