RE: The Smithsonian study on feral cat
colonies.
There are a few things you need to know
before you start exterminating feral cats and it has to do with
Scientific Studies which sound so very accurate and pristine. They
are neither and Scientific Method, though the holy grail of science,
is fraught with the same problems any theory has when you try to
practically apply it. It simply doesn't work a lot of the time.
The number one problem with Scientific
Method and Studies is their scope. By definition when you start a
study, you create a statement of purpose which is to prove let's say
a certain substance is a good moisturizer. You then choose a
representative number of subjects from YOUR available pool. This is
very important because if you are doing the study in Iowa, your pool
is liable to be more limited than in Miami and have very different
previous exposures to sun and weather. Right there you can see how
the study is going south, no pun intended, fast. You then have to
balance the study, and that is an art that most scientists do not
excel at that makes or breaks the study, because if it is not
balanced between the test group and the placebo group, you have just
skewed the study toward a single conclusion.
The secondary problem with these
studies is once begun (paid for) they cannot be altered. So, if while
studying how effective this substance is as a moisturizer, you happen
to notice it cures skin cancer, no where in the documentation or
final study can you make a statement of any kind saying it seems to
cure skin cancer. That is when it becomes more diabolical. You
would then have to take the part of the study which indicates it
cures skin cancer (and cannot be published in the study) to present
for another study but your study belongs to the company who
PAID for it so you have to get their permission. Are you beginning to
see a problem? If they stand to make more money using this as a
moisturizer, why would they allow this substance to become a cure for
skin cancer that now requires a doctor and prescription and a
complete loss of the money they put into the first study and their
new product. You work for them and you get paid by them and they own
your work. Not only that, but in the great world of pure science it
is publish or perish and whether you get published or not is
dependent on whether you agree with the University or Museum's stance
on a particular issue and whether you go along with the prevailing
attitude because in the short, no study happens without money and you
don't get money unless you agree with the people (those wonderful
philanthropists like the Koch brothers) giving the money out for
grants. The last thing you want to do is publish or do a study that
offends your big donors over in the sports department.
Now let me move to the Smithsonian
study which is badly skewed. I love all animals even rats. They are
very intelligence, social creatures with a history of disease and
destruction all the way back to black death in Europe and throughout
Africa and Asia. I bring them up because rats are not native to North
America and neither are house cats. Neither is your common house
mouse native to North America. Both of these rodents cause millions
of dollars in damage and cause disease. Both rats and the house
mouse, were imported and the common house cat is their biggest
predator. Both of these rodents are capable of living outside, so
they are not just found in a dirty house. Quite the contrary, they
push out the native species of mice, the most common being the white
footed deer mouse from their natural habitat.
You may not recognize the white footed
deer mouse but it has gotten a lot of press lately. It is only
carrier of hantavirus identified so far.
“In
mid-1993, the deer mouse (P. maniculatus) was first implicated as a
potential reservoir of a type of hantavirus responsible for an adult
respiratory distress syndrome, leading to several deaths in the Four
Corners area of the United States. Subsequent isolations of the virus
thought responsible for this illness have been made from several
Western states. The source of the disease is thought to be through
human contact with urine, feces, or saliva from infected rodents.”
http://icwdm.org/handbook/rodents/whitefooteddeermouse.asp
The
white footed deer mouse has moved into the house mouse category and
proves to be a bit more destructive as they really do eat anything.
This
study was designed to focus on songbirds alone and not the other
species that feral cats predate (eat).
So
let's look at your songbirds, many of which are also invasive species
introduced to North America that push out the native birds that the
Audubon society will scream their lungs out about the feral cats
eating but fail to mention who and what is taking over their
territory, pushing then into areas they are not able to live in and
making them easy prey. Let me just give you a reference from a
government study which if you read the whole thing will have you
wondering just how many “native” birds are left.
Between
1872 and 1874, the Cincinnati Acclimatization Society spent $9,000.00
(a small fortune at that time) to set 20 species and 3,000 individual
song birds loose. Henry Ford set 400 to 500 European song birds free
on his estate in Dearborn, MI in April of 1913 but because it was a
private estate, no data is available. The study is available at
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1824&context=usdaarsfacpub
and you can skip to page 49 for the songbirds. You might want to
peruse the game bird section which is the first 48 pages.
The
domestic feral cat was and is the main predator of both the
introduced rat and mouse and the song birds. Both the rats/mice and
songbirds are decimating the native populations of mice and
songbirds. Are you beginning to see what the study did not cover?
There's
more. The big scare tactic in the study was toxoplasmosis. The study
neglected to mention this little tidbit from the CDC:
“Toxoplasmosis
is considered to be a leading cause of death attributed to foodborne
illness in the United States. More than 60 million men, women, and
children in the U.S. carry theToxoplasma parasite,
but very few have symptoms because the immune system usually keeps
the parasite from causing illness.
However,
women newly infected with Toxoplasma during
pregnancy and anyone with a compromised immune system should be aware
that toxoplasmosis can have severe consequences.”
I
know this because I am a carrier. Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that is
also carried by rats and birds and just about every warm blooded
animal. It is capable of reproducing only in the cat but the cat gets
it from eating infected birds and rodents and you can get it from
other sources that the cat, unless you are eating cats and cat feces
(poop). Without the birds and rodents, the cats couldn't get the
parasite unless they suddenly became cannibals.
Contrary
to the inferred method that all you have to do is touch something
that is contaminated, the truth is, you have to swallow the parasite.
“Human
infection may result from:
- Blood transfusions or solid organ transplants
- Carelessly handling cat litter, which can lead to accidental consumption (eating) of infectious particles
- Eating contaminated soil
- Eating raw or undercooked meat (lamb, pork, and beef)”
I
most likely got mine not from cats but from a love of raw beef. Too
bad it took me 62 years to become a vegetarian.
And
before you really go panic, you should know the Mayo Clinic says:
“Toxoplasmosis
(tok-so-plaz-MO-sis) is a disease that results from infection with
the Toxoplasma gondii parasite. This organism is one of the world's
most common parasites.” or
in other words, it is everywhere and you aren't escaping it.
In
short, a none native species (cats) are predators for two destructive
and disease carrying non-native species (rats and house mice) and
native species of song birds are caught in the middle. No one is
studying the effects of the non-native species of song birds on the
native species because most people don't know their little finches
and sparrows don't belong in this country.
Remove
the colonies of feral cats and watch the colonies of rats and mice
bloom. Now you may ask how badly....and I say, ask the Australians.
With no natural predator for mice and the Aborigines killing and
eating the cats, mice overran a section of Australia. The one
documentary I saw, a rancher reached his arm into a feeding trough
for his horse came out covered in mice. They were a dozen deep where
ever there was a seed or anything they could eat. They left the
ground without a stem of a plant because they eat the whole plant
down to the roots if they can't find enough seeds.
Once
those rats and mice bloom, you can kiss the birds goodbye because
rats eat eggs and baby birds. They can easily climb into nests
whereas a cat is too heavy to crawl out on the thin limbs where the
bird nests. Rats attack in mass and are very intelligent. They hunt
and scavenge all night and the list of diseases they carry make
toxoplasmosis look like a walk in the park. Ground nesting birds will
be the first to go and are, of course, the easiest prey for feral
cats. But, most ground nesting birds are also the prey of hunters and
if cats reduce their population, you just might have an outcry to
kill all feral cats.
Unless
you have a way of controlling the population of rats and mice (which
so far, no one does) you might consider patting that feral cat on the
head instead of killing it.
Now,
let's see a study on non-native snakes as they really, really love a
nice bird for dinner....
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