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[-] Empricorn@feddit.nl 78 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Pet cats should live inside, with plenty of toys and people that care for them, not out killing bird populations and risking getting run over, etc. Outdoor cats have much shorter life spans...

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago

I can see the logic but it does feel like the cat’s already out of the bag on this one. There are so many free-ranging and feral cats that I wonder if it makes any difference at this point.

[-] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 1 month ago

It does. Travel to a 3rd world country and look at the difference. Dogs and cats everywhere due to no cultural expectation to keep them indoors or neuter them.

Here is an article better clarifying the effect of our cute little killing machines:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cats-kill-a-staggering-number-of-species-across-the-world/

[-] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 month ago

That article seems very new-world-centric

Europe, Mainland Asia & Africa all have native small cats and so the birds and small mammals have evolved to deal with them, the issue is that in Australia & the Americas they haven't and so that's where all the risk of species actually being wiped out is - in the old world the cats largely just replace the larger predators that humans have killed off in the ecosystem

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Even in the Americas we have wild cats though. Bobcats are slightly larger but not completely dissimilar. We even used to have ocelots across much of the US, and neotropical migrants will still encounter those for part of the year. So I find the claim that mainland birds are not able to handle cat predation to be a bit questionable. However I am not fully educated on this topic.

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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
1217 points (97.5% liked)

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