The puma, also known as the mountain lion, cougar, screamer, panther, catamount, suçuarana, pangui, American lion and dozens of other names, looks like a big cat but is genetically closer to our domestic Feline friends.
Click images for full high resolution versions. Baby puma image credit Elizabeth Lucas. Prints available here.
The more bunk studies claim cats are driving wildlife to extinction, the more people in media and government call for extreme measures to contain them.
Seventy nine cats.
That’s how many felines stood in for the entirely of the UK in a 2022 study, which is the genesis for the claim that cats kill 270 million birds and small animals in that country.
Using GPS collars, owner questionnaires and samples of prey brought home by those 79 outdoor cats, a research team from the University of Reading applied data from a mix of studies dating as far back as 23 years ago, extrapolated and massaged numbers using things like “kernel density estimates” and “generalized mixed models,” and came up with that 270 million figure, which is cited routinely and credulously by UK media.
Actually, their estimate was between 140 and 270 million. An earlier study put the number at 92 million, and a 2016 study estimated UK cats kill 55 million birds and small animals. That’s a range of 215 million!
The Reading team even quotes the infamous US meta-analysis that claims domestic cats kill as many as 4 billion birds and 22.3 billion mammals a year here. That paper, as skeptics in the science community have noted, has virtually no relationship with reality, involves no original research, and relies on data from unrelated studies and surveys in which cat owners were asked to rate their pets’ hunting prowess on a point scale while imagining what the little ones get up to when they’re outside.
All of this is to say that aside from the thorough, labor-intensive and expensive D.C. Cat Count, which brought together cat lovers, birders and scientists to work cooperatively, the 2022 UK study and its counterparts in the US and Australia are exercises in pushing an agenda masquerading as honest academic research.
That’s how we get editorials like The Spectator’s “We need a cat lockdown now” by Zoe Strimpel. Though the tone isn’t tongue in cheek, I can’t imagine Strimpel dislikes cats nearly as much as she claims, and the post was probably written with wry anticipation for the click-generating fury of cat lovers indignantly sharing it on Facebook and X.
Still, it quotes the Reading study without skepticism and portrays cats as furry little wretches who abuse their human caretakers with their claws and their disdain while gleefully eating their way through endangered birds.
Cats are predators, that much we can agree on, and outdoor cats are much more likely to negatively impact local wildlife, for obvious reasons.
Likewise, I can understand the concern with cat culture in the UK, where allowing pet cats to roam outside is the norm.
But every time the media cites the above-mentioned studies, more people are given an inaccurate impression of feline ecological impact, and more lawmakers at the local and national level consider “solutions” ranging from prohibiting people from keeping pet cats, as a government commission in Scotland recently proposed, or exterminating them outright, as some Australian states and municipalities in New Zealand have tried to do.
It’s worth pointing out that there is no data, not even a single study, showing that air-dropping poisoned sausages or arbitrarily shooting cats actually has any positive impact on birds and small mammals. All it does is terrorize sentient, intelligent domestic animals who have real emotions and experience real fear and pain.
The primary drivers of declining bird and small mammal populations — including habitat loss, environmental destruction, wind turbines and glass buildings — have nothing to do with cats. We have killed off 73 percent of the planet’s wildlife since 1970 and every species of iconic megafauna — from orangutans and gorillas to tigers and pangolins — is headed toward extinction. Are domestic cats responsible for that too, or can we be adults and fess up to our role as the main antagonist here?
Strimpel actually goes even further, claiming cats don’t have real affection for their caretakers and are more like psychopaths, faking love because it gets them what they want, primarily food and shelter.
Dogs have true affection for their humans but cats do not, she additionally claims, while adding that cat people are undateable because they share qualities with the “loutish and numerous creatures” they care for.
There was a time when I would have been ambivalent about Strimpel’s attitude toward cats, if not her cavalier treatment of basic facts. But then a drool-happy, friendly tuxedo cat showed me I could interact with his species without my allergies going haywire, and a tiny gray tabby kitten became my animal cognition teacher while blindsiding me with love.
Now every time I hear about some psychopath abusing cats, or terribly misguided politicians advocating a plan to kill millions of domestic felines, I think about my Bud. I think about how he cries for his Big Buddy when he’s hurt or stuck, how he meows and trills with excitement when he experiences something new, and how he began shaking, then threw up from overwhelming relief and happiness the first time I returned from a vacation after adopting him.
He’s got a vibrant mind in his little head, with strong opinions and emotions. So does every cat on the street, in a shelter cage, and in the cross hairs of a birder or biologist playing God by “culling” or “harvesting” cats to protect another species.
Real science, not activism packaged as science, has proven that many times over in recent years. If people want to do harm to cats because they think birds and other animals will benefit, the burden of proof is on them to show not only that their methods work, but that the results could somehow justify the fear and misery they would inflict on innocent animals to achieve their goals.
Cats are obligate carnivores who don’t have a choice. We do.
Who wants to see cute baby jaguars?
Wait a second, this last jaguar cub looks kinda familiar…
Cheetahs are on the precipice of extinction because of relentless poaching on behalf of the children of oligarchs, and showing off collections of rare big cats has become de rigueur on social media.
Imagine you’re an obscenely wealthy Emirati heir, a Saudi prince, or the scion of a global business empire in Dubai.
You started an Instagram account, but sadly photos of your Lamborghinis and McLarens aren’t really moving the needle. In the circles you run in, everyone has those. Likewise, your $20 million digs are pedestrian by the standards of Gulf opulence, and showing off private jets is so 2023.
You need something to stand out, to show the peasants that you’re not just a fabulously affluent heir, you’re also really cool and everyone should envy you.
You need a big cat.
Maybe even cats, plural, if you can’t swing an ultra rare white lion or an 850lb liger on the illegal wildlife market.
Just imagine your follower count blowing up, and how jealous the peasantry will be when you post images of your apex predator pet chillin’ in the passenger seat of your Sesto Elemento, with a pair of $20,000 sunglasses on his head for the lulz.
That’s what’s currently happening in the Gulf among the incredibly well-off children of royalty, aristocrats, oil oligarchs, shipping magnates and other bigwigs, a report in Semafor notes.
In addition to providing compelling ‘tent to their social feeds in the form of photos and videos, it’s clear the owners believe big cats offer a kind of osmotic badassery: if you have your very own lion, you must be a powerful and interesting person!
This kind of thing is not new. Years ago there was a brief outcry when wildlife groups begged authorities to protect cheetahs, who are already critically endangered and risk extinction if global elites are allowed to continue to poach them and their cubs from the wild.
As CNN noted at the time:
“While many of these states – including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – ban the private ownership and sale of wild animals, enforcement is lax.
The overwhelming majority of these cheetahs end up in Gulf Arab mansions, where Africa’s most endangered big cats are flaunted as status symbols of the ultra-rich and paraded around in social media posts, according to CCF and trafficking specialists.”…
The trend is of “epidemic proportions,” according to CCF, an organization devoted to saving cheetahs in the wild. At the current rates of trafficking, the cheetah population in the region could soon be wiped out.
“If you do the math, the math kind of shows that it’s only going to be a matter of a couple of years [before] we are not going to have any cheetahs,” said Laurie Marker, an American conservation biologist biologist and founder of CCF.
Youtube has its share of dauphins showing off cats and cars, and Instagram has an entire sub-genre of pages featuring men in pristine white robes posing in million-dollar hyper cars next to cheetah cubs or tigers who have been sedated to their eyeballs.
As the Semafor report explains, technically keeping big cats is illegal in most Gulf states, except for the super rich. They can skirt existing wildlife laws by getting permits as private “zoo” and “sanctuary” operators, and who’s to say a good zookeeper can’t keep his jaguars in an enclosure with Maseratis and Aston Martins?
One guy even runs a place called Fame Park, a private zoo. The only way to get in is if he deems you famous enough, and thus worthy, to gaze upon his wondrous menagerie of endangered beasts.
The park’s motto is “Where luxury meets wildlife wonder,” and its operator styles himself as a conservationist who just happens to enjoy rubbing elbows with esteemed figures like Andrew Tate and Steven Seagal.
Things really haven’t changed much in the last few hundred years, have they? One way royals and aristocrats amused themselves was by sending explorers to far off lands and instructing them to bring back strange animals.
That’s how elephants ended up in the courts of European kings, and how Hanno the Navigator found himself in mortal danger when he tried to capture gorillas, then decided they were “too violent” to drag back home and had them executed.
These days, the centers of power have shifted, but human behavior has not. Part of me still has hope, but the cynic in me fears people with the means to exploit rare and endangered animals will continue to do so until there are no more animals left to exploit.
A report commissioned by the Scottish government blames cats for killing 27 million birds annually in the country.
“They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom! Except maybe to keep pet cats.”
Mel Gibson’s iconic pre-battle rallying cry as Braveheart’s William Wallace might have to be amended if some Scottish politicians get their way and restrict the ownership of pet cats.
Cat lovers in Scotland were up in arms this week after several reports in Scottish and UK media said the Scottish National Party — Scotland’s most powerful political party, which controls almost half the seats in its parliament — is looking to ban cats in a bid to protect local wildlife.
They point to a recently released Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC) report that claims there are some 800,000 outdoor cats roaming the country, and those felines are responsible for 27 million birds every year, in addition to small mammals.
Meanwhile, other Scottish press pushed back on the claim, saying the SNP hasn’t voted to ban cats yet and isn’t really looking to stop people from having pet cats.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. The SAWC report did blame cats for killing tens of millions of animals annually, and it did recommend legislation to limit or prevent people from keeping cats in some areas.
In addition to a law requiring people to keep their pet cats indoors, the report suggested curfews and, yes, legislation that would forbid people from keeping pet cats if they live in certain places deemed “vulnerable” to feline predatory habits. That means if wildlife biologists identify an endangered bird that nests in an area, for example, people who live there would not be permitted to have pet cats.
However, the report does not call for a general or widespread ban, as some media reports suggested.
The report credited Australia, where several states have enacted strict measures forbidding people from allowing their cats outside, prohibiting them from owning cats in some places, and even embarking on an infamous campaign to kill three million domestic cats by air-dropping sausages laced with a poison that is lethal to felines, but supposedly not harmful to other animals.
That measure preceded several years of “biblical” rodent plagues, with hordes of mice rampaging across entire swaths of the country and causing billions of dollars in damage to residential and commercial property. Cats are, of course, the natural predators of rodents, and domestic cats wouldn’t exist as a species if they weren’t attracted to human settlements where mice and rats feasted on grain reserves.
I haven’t had the chance to take a deep dive into the SAWC report yet, so I don’t know precisely how the commission arrived at the numbers it did, or if the research is original. Hopefully I’ll have a follow up on that soon.
While the truth is somewhere in the middle, so is the solution. People who love cats are happy to voluntarily meet certain guidelines, and they should be, because if we’re uncooperative, someone will eventually turn to compulsion through law. Likewise, concern for the welfare of cats and wild animals aren’t mutually exclusive.
In the meantime, Scotland’s government is likely to spend more money studying the problem before acting.
Pain In The Bud 