Polish Institute Classifies Cats as Alien Invasive Species (apnews.com) 163
A respected Polish scientific institute has classified domestic cats as an "invasive alien species," citing the damage they cause to birds and other wildlife. From a report: Some cat lovers have reacted emotionally to this month's decision and put the key scientist behind it on the defensive. Wojciech Solarz, a biologist at the state-run Polish Academy of Sciences, wasn't prepared for the disapproving public response when he entered "Felis catus," the scientific name for the common house cat, into a national database run by the academy's Institute of Nature Conservation. The database already had 1,786 other species listed with no objections, Solarz told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The uproar over invasive alien species No. 1,787, he said, may have resulted from some media reports that created the false impression his institute was calling for feral and other cats to be euthanized. Solarz described the growing scientific consensus that domestic cats have a harmful impact on biodiversity given the number of birds and mammals they hunt and kill. The criteria for including the cat among alien invasive species, "are 100% met by the cat," he said. In a television segment aired by independent broadcaster TVN, the biologist faced off last week against a veterinarian who challenged Solarz's conclusion on the dangers cats pose to wildlife.
The uproar over invasive alien species No. 1,787, he said, may have resulted from some media reports that created the false impression his institute was calling for feral and other cats to be euthanized. Solarz described the growing scientific consensus that domestic cats have a harmful impact on biodiversity given the number of birds and mammals they hunt and kill. The criteria for including the cat among alien invasive species, "are 100% met by the cat," he said. In a television segment aired by independent broadcaster TVN, the biologist faced off last week against a veterinarian who challenged Solarz's conclusion on the dangers cats pose to wildlife.
Public opinion vs fact (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Public opinion vs fact (Score:5, Insightful)
I like cats, but I agree with the conclusion. The big issue is that people don't keep them inside their houses.
Re: (Score:2)
And when they let the cat out and that cat gets kittens, they sometimes release those kittens into the wild instead of taking them to a humane shelter where they'd be neutered.
Re: (Score:2)
I like cats, but I agree with the conclusion. The big issue is that people don't keep them inside their houses.
True, but not quite far enough... cats are a menace because they're a favored species of the real environmental menace, the outbreak species that is us.
Though, unlike the other mammalian species we keep (in great numbers) for food, recreation, or security, Felis catus offers only mousing skills and boundless entertainment value, in exchange for favored status.
Re: (Score:3)
I wonder if the U.S.'s National Academies of Science is willing to also recognize the impact and make that classification? There is plenty of research literature documenting the negative impact on wildlife that cats have.
Re: (Score:2)
Cat vs SUV (Score:2, Funny)
Fact: Cats pollute and contribute more to global warming than a SUV does!
People don't like this. Approximately half that is the kitty litter. Also, the average ownership of an SUV is about half that of a cat.
So, ditch your SUV to justify your cat and go to a green kitty liter.
Before you go after dogs, even large dogs are better (no litter. but excluding litter, a big dog is worse than a cat.)
Vindicated at last! (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing of this Earth acts like that, in that kind of heat! Therefore proving that they're from another, much warmer, planet...and have been slowly taking over for more than a millennia now.
"What's that pumpkin? Oh look at you and those adorable eyes...sure you can have some more catnip. Here ya go silly girl...now run along daddy's busy. OW! Why you little devil, why'd you scratch me? Sigh..."
Where was I? Oh yeah, I HATE CATS!
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, who left the door open and another stray dog wandered in?
A job for Boston Dynamics (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mice vs birds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Birds? I don't like them either. They eat my stuff in my garden and don't seem to provide much value from what I can tell.
When I had these feral cats, I almost never saw dead birds, but I saw MANY mice corpses littered around. So given that cats aren't very good at hunting birds, but are great at hunting mice, I'd much much much rather have cats around than any local birds they eat. While North America has a few native cat species, so maybe our ecosystem is more evolved than the Polish one, I am very happy to have thriving cats at the expense of a few birds.
I know what cats do for me and I like it VERY much...hey birds, what have you done for me lately?
Re: (Score:2)
Birds? I don't like them either. They eat my stuff in my garden and don't seem to provide much value from what I can tell.
Birds eat the insects that would eat you and your garden.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, birds are the real aliens. Swoopin' around like they own the place...
But birds evolved in the Jurassic, so they do have a prior claim.
Re: (Score:2)
Some birds provide pollination services in addition to the point made by someone else about them eating insects.
There is also the argument that cats can spread a disease called toxoplasmosis that can have bad outcomes for pregnant women. But they have to handle the poop of an infected cat I believe, so the risk is probably small.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, then again, you have people with cats in the house with litter boxes in the kitchen.....and they jump on counters etc, sometimes without wiping their asses.
And then, along comes a pregnant human woman....contact.
Re: (Score:2)
There are several feral colonies near my house. I have collected 3 kitten over the years. We have no rodents anywhere other than some very twitchy squirrels. I rather like the results. We also have a lot of birds but that is because one of my neighbors has been feeding the birds for 20 years.
Re: (Score:2)
> what I can tell. I am very happy to have thriving cats at the expense of a few birds.
> I know what cats do for me and I like it VERY much...hey birds, what have you done for me lately?
Ignore the loss of birds at your peril, they do more than most people realize, ask Chairman Mao how the
'Four Pests' campaign went. Eliminating the sparrows killed millions:
https://www.thevinta
Cats danger to environment wildly overstated (Score:5, Informative)
The whole notion that cats are harmful to the environment is because of a SINGLE questionable study [npr.org] done, which estimates cats kill "billions" of birds a year.
In years and years of owning cats, and helping with cat rescue in the past, what I have seen is that cats killing birds, even wild feral cats, is fairly rare. Why? Because it's lots easier for cats to go for rodents, which abound, and have more meat than birds. City cats are also more inclined to go for garbage than birds, especially since in cities birds have so many very high unreachable areas to perch on.
In my own local neighborhood in recent years, there's a cat that wanders between houses and I've seen it kill mice and rats many times, but never once a bird... that action is reserved for hawks.
Cats are mostly doing the thing we domesticated them for in the first place - reducing the rodent population, and you thank them by putting them on an invasive species list?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Way to pick one old story. Sure, there were wide intervals in the uncertainty about the number of cats. Not birds killed. Number of cats that are doing the killing. That still doesn't take away from the main point in that publication that cats make a big impact on birds.
To counter your argument based on one weak data point, I've made it easy it easy for you to realize your premise that 'it was one lousy research project' that has pointed out that cats are a scourge on wildlife, I've given you more research
So many links, so little content. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes I can use Google also; what you neglect to mention is a lot of those articles are behind paywalls so you can't review references, the one that is not behind a paywall is using the poor numbers I cited (from 2016) as a base. So basically your response is total fail and does nothing to refute what I am saying, but it does provide a great example of how one bad study can mislead a lot of idiots.
A (hopefully) simple exercise for you - if there are around 7.2 billion birds [google.com] in the U.S., and cats are killing
Re: (Score:2)
My last cat never killed things, he just played with them. The one exception was a fish that died out of water. He actually got another fish a few months later, but we saved it.
Did keep the mice away.
Re: (Score:2)
kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day (Score:2)
In Arizona house cats that slip outside are more like to be eaten by a bird than vise-versa. Our cats eat bugs, have yet to see them bag a mouse, and birds (usually quail) just sit outside on the windowsills and taunt the little furry monsters.
And what's the deal with all the cat hating? I understand Iran is contemplating banning ALL pets. -> https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's not necessarily cat "hating". Wanting cats to be neutered is not hating them. Wanting domestic cats to stay instead instead of wandering out into wilderness areas is not hating them. Even wanting feral cats to be humanely euthanized is not hating them.
Humans are the Invasive Ones (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live, they are building new neighborhoods.
When they build them, the coyotes are relocated. Because of that, the populations of mice, snakes, skunks and raccoons, to name a few, go up dramatically.
When humans arrive, where I live, we plant trees where there were none. The population of birds goes up. There have never been so many doves, bluejays and robins in my area, ever. Yes, cats eat some of them, but the population is much greater than 50 years ago.
Without cats, we'd be inundated by these critters. I personally hate trapping mice but would have no choice without the cats. They are the only thing that keeps them in check.
I get why people *think* that cats are the enemy, but they don't get the larger picture. They don't understand what the eco-system was like before they showed up and built their large houses, roads and mini-malls.
I'd argue that without humans, the eco-system would have been in check, and you likely wouldn't have a cat population as the coyotes and other animals would have eaten them.
If you're going to get rid of cats, you need to get rid of Humans too.
--
Perspective is everything when you are experiencing the challenges of life. - Joni Eareckson Tada
Re: (Score:2)
When humans arrive, where I live, we plant trees where there were none.
What? I've seen humans do a lot of things to trees, but I've never seen them collectively accused of planting them. Devastating forests sure, razing them to make way for concrete suburbs absolutely. Planting them? Getouttahere.
I knew it! (Score:2)
It's been all down hill since the docu-drama that was released years ago... of course, the cats whitewashed it and made everyone think it was all made up. I believe it was called The Cat from Outer Space [imdb.com].
Now, where did I put that darned tinfoil hat?
Wanna see an invasive species? (Score:5, Interesting)
Look in the mirror.
Quite seriously, the one species that invaded every single ecosystem and is hellbent on destroying it is human. If we really cared about invasive species, we'd start offing oursel... ok, granted we already do that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, I'm not the one complainaing about invasive species.
Bob Barker was right! (Score:2)
Spay or neuter your pets unless you are a breeder.
Domestic cats were purposefully introduced, unlike rats and snakes. Cats provide affection and companionship. Throughout history they have been used to control rodent populations. Feral and outdoor cats most definitely have an impact on the local ecology. The article does not distinguish between wanted and unwanted mammals. Killing disease-bearing mice near your home is much different than killing squirrels and chipmunks in the park.
KittyCams (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait until the borg assimilate them (Score:4, Funny)
Felis Catus Borgus. Species 902. Assimilated on stardate 43202. We experienced the following degradations within the collective: A desire to chase laser beams. Sitting on the transwarp generator. Staring at power nodes. And meowing.
An adaptive patch was developed and deployed. No further contact with Species 902 will be attempted.
A true killer (Score:2)
If someone told me this guy [nocookie.net] killed billions of birds, lizards, and small mammals every year, I would believe you!
(that's two Zero Wing shitposts in the same day, I'm on a roll)
Those aren't cats ... (Score:2)
those are Flerken!!
They invaded the internets (Score:2)
...and now Poland?
Futurama... (Score:2)
Futurama saw this one...my own pet conspiracy theory...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
JoshK.
Time limit? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many centuries of adaptation to a certain environment before something is considered endemic or indigenous? I have no doubt domestic cats have existed in the Slavic region of Europe for nearly as long as trade routes and agriculture have existed.
How about Humans? (Score:3)
Classify Humans as invasive species... (Score:2)
It seems humanities hubris knows no bounds.
No real point explaining the concept of our species as being invasive, because it's writ large across every single part of this planet.
Re: (Score:2)
Invasive species are harmful to OUR habitats. That is the actual definition before Marxists got to tinker with it to inject politics in 1920s (see: Lyshenkoism). That is why humans by definition cannot be invasive, and why animals we domesticate for specific purposes can only be harmful if they get outside that specific purpose.
Because Mother Gaia isn't real, and there's no socialist commune of all animals who would live in wonderful life on this beautiful planet if they weren't oppressed by humans who make
Ivory tower idiots (Score:2)
The main reason why humans domesticated cats is specifically because they're mean, lean murder machines. They exterminate lots of horrible small life forms that are harmful to human life in some way, ranging from rodents to snakes to birds and so on.
This effect is not a bug. It's a feature. It takes an absolutely disconnected academic idiot who tunnel visions a single subject to not understand this and classify the animal we specifically domesticated across the planet for the purpose of making our immediate
Australia is doing it right (Score:2)
Internet invaded and kill the Twitters (Score:3)
True. Cats also invaded the internet and they kill all the Twitters here.
Re: (Score:2)
So they also serve a benign cause in the ecosystem?
Re: (Score:2)
The reason they have been domesticated is because they keep human barns and grain silos from being infested with rodents. They are about as invasive as humans themselves, given they have been with us for thousands of years, there is no reason to classify them as invasive.
A destructive species is not necessarily an invasive species. All species are destructive in sufficient amounts, look at deer.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
TBH putting up apartments is probably a lot more damaging to the environment than Mittens going out into the yard
Re: Cats will eat you (Score:2)
"Once a plot of land grows a house, it never grows anything else"
Or so said one of my old forestry professors.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't think they should be classified as invasive?
I saw a stray cat in my back yard. It was probably living in the woods across the street. It came up to me and was acting friendly. I petted it some.
I said I'll give it some tuna, and my wife said no no no it'll never go away. I instantly saw that she was right and thus knew it was bad idea, but as usual that made no difference. I gave it a can of tuna and never fed it again.
Soooo, from then on for the next several years I had an omni-present cat that n
No doubt (Score:2, Informative)
There is no doubt.
Cats kill 1500x more birds than Wind turbines.
Re:No doubt (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The vast majority of things killed by cats are killed by ferals hunting for food
Re:No doubt (Score:5, Informative)
In Mountain View, feral cats had been hunting ground nesting owls. Officials had been trapping cats to remove them. But at the same time, they've caught Google employees going out to set up feral cat feeding stations! Some people just refuse to believe that feral cats can be a problem, they just see cute fuzzy kittens in their head. Cat lovers oppose the bird lovers, they think they can solve the problem by capturing, neutering, then releasing the cats back into the same area, which only makes sense if you can neuter ALL the cats. Because they can have more than one litter of kittens in a year the population explodes quickly. And during the pandemic when the humane shelters weren't being staffed as much, the feral population boomed even more than normal. There's nothing wrong with euthanizing feral cats humanely, and certainly nothing wrong with neutering your house cats, especially if they're allowed outside.
House cats will kill wildlife too, being well fed doesn't turn off the hunting instinct. In Washington DC the found the a large percentage of killed birds were decapitated but not eaten.
Re: (Score:2)
they think they can solve the problem by capturing, neutering, then releasing the cats back into the same area, which only makes sense if you can neuter ALL the cats.
There's nothing wrong with euthanizing feral cats humanely
The argument "only makes sense if you can XXX ALL the cats" works the same with XXX=neuter or XXX=euthanize humanely. And if you can choose, then neuter is a more humane option than euthanize humanely. There is here a very classical moral dilemma (tramway kind) in choosing between letting the cat live who then kills the bird, or killing the cat preventively to save the bird. I think the usual human solution to this dilemma is the preference for least external interference -- letting the cat live and letting
Re:No doubt (Score:5, Informative)
My cat much prefers mice. He has on occasion gotten a junco, however any bird too stupid to see a black cat on the snow is too stupid to live anyway.
And the quail seem to have no trouble with the local feral cats.
And one cat, assumed to be feral, was killed by a red tailed hawk, so there is some turnabout there as well.
A couple winters ago a kestrel staked out my bird feeder, converting it into a second order bird feeder. (I fed the juncos, the juncos fed the kestrel) The junco and house sparrow populations took a sudden dive. The finches seemed to do better.
I watched a raven kill and swallow a nest of newly hatched killdeer while the female watched. And the barred owls are eating the spotted owls. Nature is not a Disney movie.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There's nothing wrong with euthanizing feral cats humanely
If your metric is that creatures killing other creatures is a valid reason to kill them, then let's take the impact that humans have on wildlife.
Do you agree that there is nothing wrong with killing humans humanely?
It's rather odd that cats are presumed murderous carnivores evilly killing and making birds extinct.
We feed birds in my backyard, and cats run about the neighborhood. And yes, the cats take a few birds. But in all my years living here, the ratio has to be thousands to one. The cats occas
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Right or wrong this is classic whataboutism and completely irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2)
You could make the argument that humans are an invasive species. The criteria are 100% met.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes they are, but its still a ridiculous point in this thread.
Re: (Score:2)
Humans are not an invasive species in Africa, given that is where humans evolved.
Re:No doubt (Score:5, Insightful)
...and humans kill how many more creatures than cats?
I'd estimate 100m chickens are eaten daily worldwide.
At this rate, if all of these chickens were caught wild, this species of bird would go extinct within weeks. Luckily, humans raise new chickens at a rate that matches their consumption.
Cats, OTOH, don't raise their own livestock.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:major doubt (Score:5, Informative)
Your owned house-cat is most certainly killing animals if it ever ranges beyond your yard. But the real problem is the un-owned housecats that wander effectively as feral or non-feral outdoor all the time cats. They need to eat too and they have few predators.
Re: (Score:2)
Y'know, the same could be said about mountain lions - they have few predators and they need to eat too.
Only difference being that mountain lions weren't bright enough to domesticate humans...
Re: (Score:2)
Y'know, the same could be said about mountain lions - they have few predators and they need to eat too.
I guess you missed the "invasive species" bit.
Re: (Score:2)
A study in Nature [nature.com] looked at a series of studies across the US documenting primarily un-owned cats and their impact on local societies. It then extrapolated that into an estimated population of un-owned cats and it's impact on the environment. The estimate is that un-owned cats are killing around 1.2B birds annually and 23 billion mammals annually.
Your owned house-cat is most certainly killing animals if it ever ranges beyond your yard. But the real problem is the un-owned housecats that wander effectively as feral or non-feral outdoor all the time cats. They need to eat too and they have few predators.
but what was the impact on bird populations by indigenous predators that we drove off like bobcat, lynx, foxes, weasle, stouts, etc
predatory control (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, in some parts of Asia...they're known as "Pho".
Just sayin'...
Re: (Score:2)
Coyotes and hawks eat house cats all the time. And the relentless war on the mice and rats is a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
What? What area do you live in that does not have many of one or more of the following feline predators?
Coyotes/Dogs/Wolves
Snakes
Hawks/Eagles
I'm sure there are more natural feline predators that I am not thinking about off the top of my head, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Feral cat diet composition isn't unknown—there are multiple studies in multiple locations looking at species composition in stomach contents and feces, which are cited in the Nature article.
Re: (Score:2)
No they didn't, they pulled estimates from other "studies."
They even admit feral cats in USA are massive unknown. They admit studies in USA too few so they used data from other temperate regions. It's ass-pulling upon ass-pulls!
If someone wanted to show how to make estimate within two orders of magnitude, this is how you'd do it!
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Re: (Score:3)
It doesn't change t
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I have one outdoor cat (not by my choice) and over the around 8 years we've had her shes has to my knowledge killed 3 birds (at least ones she brought back to our door). its usually mice/rats/lizards and the occasional mole and snake.
She is also an indoor/outdoor cat so she mainly eats regular cat food indoors. i imagine a feral cat always outdoors is much more motivated to hunt birds for food rather than mine seemingly doing it for sport.
Re:major doubt (Score:4, Insightful)
Your anecdote is not as good as our evidence [nature.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Since we're doing anecdotes, I have a counter-anecdote.
I live in a rural residential kind of area—2-10 acre lots, mix of light woods, yards, barns and paddocks for horses. A few lots away, there was an old woman who would accept feral cats from all around the county, have them sterilized, and then release them from her house. I put up a game camera in the backyard and I eventually stopped looking at it regularly because it was just picture after picture of cats. Another neighbor who has lived there lo
Re: (Score:2)
Your evidence is not relevant to the anecdote, it says so right in the abstract that the majority of the bird kills are not from people who own cats who let them free range, but rather from "un-owned". The word domestic in this case refers to domesticated breeds of cat rather than people's pets (which is what the OP is talking about).
Re: (Score:2)
From that link, I see this:
"We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually"
All the mammals they get (mice, rats, voles, squirrels, gophers, etc.) is 80+% of their kills. The 20% that's avian is unfortunate, but shit happens.
Re: (Score:2)
My cat will kill and eat anything that walks, crawls, or flies. There are wild rabbits in my neighborhood and the only part left when it's finished it a liver on my front porch.
I see it sizing me up from time to time. It it were bigger, we'd have an entirely different relationship.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure it's a liver, and not a stomach? I've seen owls leave them out, as the contents upset their own stomach...
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty sure they're livers. Might be gifts left for me. One time the cat came in through the cat door carrying a live mouse. She waited patiently at the bathroom door until I came out of the shower, then bit through the mouse's skull and left me a gift of the freshest mouse, with blood spurting out of its head. Such a sweet kitty!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Used to live with 3 cats and between them, they'd kill a bird every couple months, and those are just the ones I knew about. One of them actually ate the birds and once bagged a hummingbird.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mmmm. Pussy good.
Re:Polish Jokes (Score:4, Funny)
Well, they have the advantage that you can polish them while you can only finish Skandinavian jokes.