May 24, 2022 • 46 mins
Josh and Chuck wade into dangerous waters with the debate over just how destructive cats are for local ecosystems (turns out it’s pretty bad) and some ideas on what to do about that (you may not want to know). Tune in and tense up!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and Welcome to the Hornet's Nest. I'm Josh,
there's Chuck Cherry's here, and this is stuff you should know.
Josh's idea. Yeah, as I was researching this, I started
(00:25):
sweating like cartoon bullets off of my forehead, like I was, um,
little orphan any or something. When she's startled or Nancy,
Nancy is a better one. Do you remember Nancy m
hmm with Lugo? Yeah? Yeah, I remember Nancy and Slugo. Yeah.
So she is one of the great overlooked comic strips
(00:47):
of all time, and she's still going on. She's got
a new breath of life in her. She's using computers
in the Internet and everything by saying great like almost
kind of subversive humor and outlook that that any um
that that Nancy always had, check it out. I haven't
looked at the funny papers in a long time. Do
(01:07):
they still have the old favorite? Yeah? But I don't
think they call them funny papers anymore because they're not funny,
and then they never worked. Plus, no one wants to
point out that it's made of paper that the comics. Yeah,
I used to love Beatle Bail. Of course, Garfield in
bloom County. And when I got a little bit older,
(01:29):
the one that has got a little political. That was
so good, Sally Forth, No, I got political, dude, Yeah,
not bloom County. But the other one that was Jon'sburry, Yeah, Doon'sburry.
Oh yeah, that one was always political. Uh. And then
Beatle Bailey. I love Beatle Bailey. What about Haggard the Horrible?
(01:49):
He was fine, a family circus I liked at the time,
but looking back, it was the least funny comic in history.
It was. It was just it was cute. Brenda Starr Trail,
Mary worth Mark trail. What was going on with that guy?
It was just a nature propaganda disguised to say a
(02:10):
comic strip really was, you know, nature propaganda, save the
Earth and all that big nature. So that's funny that
you say that, because there's there's a group of people
who are involved in today's topic that possibly refer to
their opponents as big nature. Weirdly chuck like, I don't
(02:31):
think they do, but the same sense and sensibility is
still there. Jane Austin reference second one in the in
two podcasts that's right. Uh so, yeah, can we just
cavy out this episode? You said it was a hornet's nest.
This is about cats, domestic cats being an invasive species.
(02:54):
I'm sorry, but they are. I love cats. I've got
two cats, I've always had cats, always love cats, I
will always have cats. This has nothing to do with
being anti or pro cat. It is just dissecting sort
of the scientific problem of cats in the same way
that cats dissect birds and small mammals for sport, right,
(03:17):
which we talked about a lot, but we'll talk about
it a lot more. Yeah. So I'm with you, Chuck,
and like we're you know, it is an issue, and
it's a problem. And one of the things that's contributing
to making it a problem is that the two sides
are so diametrically opposed and so over one another that
there's a there's just no conversation going on, and then
(03:38):
the general public, like you and me, Um are just
kind of blissfully unaware of this and then just get
goose every once in a while when the media kind
of picks up this issue or runs a headline or
an article about it, Um, and the idea is, like
you said that that it's pretty pretty much widely held
among wildlife and conservation biologists that cats, house cats, and
(04:01):
specifically feral cats are an invasive species around the world
and have they reak enormous havoc, including species extinction in
the habitats in our backyards and the habitats that they
inhabit um. But before we really kind of get into
that and lay out the case one way or another, um,
(04:23):
we should probably talk about the cat and where the
cat came from and why they hang out on our
backyards to begin with. That's right, we should. They came
we think from the mid mid East with not Mid
East as in Virginia. That's not the mid East. That's
the Middle East. That's the mid Atlantic. Yeah, the Middle
(04:44):
East of planet Earth, which was you know, these wildcats
from the forest called Felis sylvestris, which is interesting. I
never thought about Sylvester the cat taking Felix the cat, yeah,
or Felix taking their names from the original cats. But
that is the thought is that they came from there.
We're most likely domesticated about twelve thousand years ago, and
(05:07):
we don't know for sure, but the general thought is
once we started becoming an agriculturally based society, and we
had grain and seed to store. Then the mice and
the rats started coming around, and the wildcats started coming
around to take care of that problem, and humans were like, hey,
this is fine with us. And then over time some
(05:28):
of those cats got a little friendlier than others and
there and the people were like, oh, you like a
little scritch under the neck. Huh, well, you want to
come inside and have some milk. Shouldn't give cats milk,
But they didn't know that at a time. And that's
the best idea we have going of how cats and
initially became domesticated. Yeah, and there's evidence of, you know,
(05:50):
of cats being domesticated um that come from Cyprus, where
there are no native cats. So cat bones and cat
fossils are sensibly domesticated because they would have had to
have been taken there by humans by ship. It's possible
the cats stowed away, but it's also just as possible
that eight thousand years ago, when this cat bone on
(06:10):
Cypress is from Um, the the cat was domesticated enough
to ride along aboard a ship um with sailors. And
then there's another cat fossil from about years earlier than
that so just under ten thousand years ago, um, where
the cat was deliberately buried with the human, which strongly
(06:32):
also suggests domestication. So it's not a really big stretch
that by about twelve thou years ago and we started
storing surplus grain, that's about the time when cats and
humans really started to kind of coincide. Yeah, And I
think you had probably best described this as a mutualistic
relationship at this point, because both species are benefiting. We
(06:54):
have talked in the past about commence al um boom,
and maybe that's how one might have described it, which
is like cats are eating the mice. Humans were like, fine,
big wook, but we don't really care. But I would
say it's probably more mutualistic, don't you don't you think? Yes? Absolutely, Again,
I posit that there's no such thing as commence all
(07:15):
is um. I think both parties, somehow, some way always
are either benefited or harmed by this situation. And this
is a great example of that because if we're growing
surplus or for growing grain, we have surplus to feed
more and more people, um, and the last us through
the wind or whatever, we have these grain stores. If
(07:37):
you know, mice and rats come along and eat our grain.
That's a problem for us. And if the cats come
along and eat the mice or the rats, that solves
our problem. So the cat is getting to eat all
of this food that's showing up that these grain stores
where otherwise they would have to go and hunt all
over the place. The cats benefiting, we're benefiting mutualism. That's right.
(08:01):
I agree. Okay, Uh, you don't have to talk me
into it, buddy, Okay, lay off, then lay off. We
need T shirts. Man, do we still have T shirts? Oh?
I don't know either. I haven't seen him in a while.
We've never done a good job at promoting that stuff. No,
that's right. Uh. So here's the deal with cats as
(08:22):
an invasive species, though, is they are very uh hardy
as a species. They survive even though they don't have
a real natural range. They can live in many, many
different environments successfully. Uh. And there are obviously your your
pet cats, which are I don't think we said what
was the name of the domesticated cat. Finally, Felis catus,
(08:46):
which sounds like a bugs bunny cartoon, you know, like
when road runner would yeah, would they freeze frame? You know,
it's basically what they would write. But that's it was
totally unimaginative as it gets. So you've got your your
feral cats, and you've got your cats that live inside
houses but also freely rome outside like uh, like, oh,
(09:09):
I have a pet cat, but it never comes inside
because I don't like changing litter boxes. So we have
outdoor cats. And then there's the feral cat. And those
are the two cats that are causing problems. Uh. And
they are very much different and this is from the grabster.
He points out they're very different than other quote unquote
domestic invasive species that you might have as a pet,
because we talked about the Burmese python problem in Florida.
(09:33):
Those aren't truly domesticated. Uh. And then there are feral
dog populations in the world, and they do cause problems,
but not like cats do. No, definitely not so Um.
Apparently there's also like a really good case that's made
that cats aren't truly domesticated either, which rings a bell
(09:53):
to me from our animal Domestication episode. Yeah, I think
I remember that. I think they're considered semi domestic actually
person intense and perfect basically or no, they just come
and go as they please. There they hang around us
as much as they want to, you know. All right, Well,
speaking of hanging out, let's take a little break and
we'll get to the grizzly details of what these cats do,
because even though you've said it before, you might not
(10:15):
have heard that episode. You might think, what would my
sweet little cat do if let outside besides just creep around. Well,
we'll tell you what they'll do right after this, all right, Chuck. So,
(10:47):
I think anybody who owns a cat that's not indoor
cat UM has had some experience or other where their
cat has shown up on their doorstep with a present
of a bird, mouse, a small road, and baby squirrel
um the baby seal, depending on where you are, but
some some little animal where the cat is saying either hey, UM,
(11:11):
I want you to have this, I really appreciate all
of the fancy feast. Or they theorize that possibly the
cat is UM keeping a toy that it was playing
with earlier. It's brought home to like hang onto, or
it's it's um following and it's UM, I guess kind
of evolutionary impulse to teach other cats how to hunt.
(11:33):
It's teaching you how to hunt. That's what it's bringing.
Those are the big main theories that I saw, Like,
see how it's done, buddy, Yeah, you see this bird?
Can you do that? And you may be horrified when
the cat does that. You may also be like, you know, Felix,
come on, you can't do that. Where's this bird's head anyway? Um,
(11:55):
and then just kind of forget about it, put it
out of your mind. Maybe you go to the trouble
of bearing the bird, which is nice if you do that,
but you just move along with your day. Your cat
might do that a few times a year. And if
you multiply that by the number of cats who are
roaming around, and you number multiply that by the number
of feral cats, you suddenly get into really really really
(12:17):
big numbers, and the idea of just how destructive invasive
cats are, um really kind of comes into focus. Yeah.
So here are numbers from uh about nine years ago.
And this is kind of hard to track, but they
do the best job that they can with these numbers. Uh.
(12:38):
Domestic cats, these are to say, pet cats and feral cats. Uh.
And we should say that feral cats kill about three
times is more animals and birds as domestic cats, but
between one point four in three point seven billion with
a B birds and sit point nine and this is
(13:01):
a big range to twenty point seven billion mammals a year.
This is every single year. And you found some more
stats that really kind of put a cherry on top here. Uh.
Rodents are linked to the extinction of seventy five different species.
Cats are linked to the extinction of sixty three different
(13:23):
species where they have completely been extinct, forty bird species,
twenty one mammal species, and two reptile species. Right, So, UM,
we should say that the UM the species extinction that's global.
They think the that those numbers that you said between
(13:46):
up to around four billion birds and as many as
UM twenties plus billion mammals every year. Chuck, that's in
the United States alone, and not only in the United
States one that's to the contiguous forty eight states alone
every year. That's what this two thousand and thirteen study
(14:07):
between Smithsonian Institute and UM the US Fish and Wildlife
Service concluded. Right, So there are people and you know,
we'll get to you know, some of the possible solutions
later on. But if you talk to the head of
the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center UM and named Pete Mara.
He will say very clearly that there should be a
(14:29):
zero tolerance for free ranging cats. Uh, they should be trapped,
they should be removed and not returned um and then
goes on to say more things that are a little
more grizzly should be done if you have no other choices,
which is euthanasia, um, professional hunters, poisons, stuff like that.
(14:51):
But you know that sounds and it is super harsh,
and if you're a cat person, you're just like horrified
right now. But what about the bird people? You know?
Right So that's why there's the opposition on one side
or wildlife biologists and conservationists and on the other side,
you know, cat advocates and activists, and they're they're butting
(15:12):
heads over this, and it's like a really big it's
a it's a huge issue one way or another. Uh.
And one one side is saying just leave them alone.
On the other side's like, no, we can't leave them
alone or else they're going to continue to create um
species extinctions and kill billions and billions of birds and
small mammals every year. And there's a lot of ways
that they might do this. There's a story of a
(15:35):
cat named Tibbles. It was a single female cat who
arrived on a little island off of New Zealand called
Steven's Island in the eighteen nineties. There were no cats there.
In fact, there were no predatory mammals, so much so
that the little Steven's Island wrend lost its ability to fly.
It had no reason to fly. It had all the
(15:55):
food it needed on the island, it didn't need to
escape predation. So um, they lost their ability to fly
and became one of just three flightless songbirds in the world.
And now we have two species of flightless songbirds in
the world thanks to Tibbles and the litter that she had.
That's right, Tibbles arrived pregnant, and I mean this is
(16:16):
a very clear cut case of one pregnant cat showed
up and literally Tibbles in the offspring made the Stevens
Island rand no more. It is completely extinct. Yeah, and
so that is that's one single instance where they can
say this cat did this. And I've even seen it,
like said, in places like this, the legend goes or
(16:39):
the story goes or something like that. So I'm not
certain exactly how well documented it is. Um and more
to the point, even if that is a accurate it's
really difficult to extrapolate that onto you know, the rest
of the world, onto wildlife in general. There's a lot
of factors and a lot of pressures the go into
(17:00):
a species going extinct. But from what I'm seeing, the
conservation biologists and wildlife biologists who are UM doing meta
analyzes of you know, smaller studies and kind of putting
the numbers together, they typically tend to UM to make
suppositions on the lower end. So these numbers may actually
(17:22):
be under reported, they may be much higher UM than
what we think. But the upshot of it is that
there seems to be a UM. Cats seem to be,
if not directly or solely responsible, in some cases, they
are largely responsible for some species extinction. That's right. Um
(17:43):
Cats also spread disease. If you look at rabies in twoteens,
not that long ago, cats accounted for six of all
rabid domestic animals in the United States. UM. So, like,
I don't know, people talk about like possums and raccoons
and they're just and rats and they're like, oh god,
(18:03):
there you know, rabbit animals. Yet they will feed a
stray you know feral cat, which is something that even
you know, animal people say you shouldn't do because that
just means there will reproduce and there will be more
feral cats. And feral cats don't do so well. They uh,
they struggle to live and they get they get hurt,
(18:24):
and they get hit by cars and they get run over,
and I think, uh, a large percentage of the litter
doesn't even make it past six months. So if you
love cats, you shouldn't be feeding feral cats. Yeah, it's
a little you know, it's hard to wrap your head
around it, but that's if you want a healthy population
of cats, you shouldn't feed feral cats. Right. It is
(18:44):
does seem very paradoxical and even mean. But we'll get
into a little more. Y Um. But one of the
things you said about effects cats can have on the ecosystem,
especially feral cats, um is that they in particular spread
um toxoplasma guy in the um, which we had an
entire episode on years and years and years ago. But um,
(19:06):
it's a it's a type of parasite that can affect um,
that can create neurological symptoms and humans. It can. It's
pretty rare that it actually does that. But it can
cause birth effects in children, uh, in fetuses, which is
why you're pregnant. You're advised stay away from litter boxes
or handling cat feces, you know, in general, which is
(19:26):
just good advice generally, um, because of toxoplasma UM. And
it actually can kill other animals too, right, oh sure, uh,
And you know it spreads through those feces. So any
warm blooded I mean we we can get infected. You know,
humans can and do get toxic. I'm sure I have
(19:46):
toxoplasmosis by this point, Um, any warm blooded animal can
get it. And yeah, it can. It can kill uh,
animals as large as a seal. Yes. And the reason
why cat are so important into this chain is the
UM T gandhi UM eggs can only reproduce or the
(20:08):
the parasite can only reproduce in the gut of a cat.
So if you take cats out of the equation, if
you take cats that are roaming around the landscape pooping everywhere,
you take um toxoplasmosis out of the equation largely too. UM.
And then lastly, chuck one of the other things in
addition to actually you know, wreaking havoc on bird and
(20:30):
small mammal and also vertebrate or um reptile and amphibian
populations too. Um by directly eating them or killing them
for sport, they're they're having an indirect effect on some
other native populations of like hawks, owls, um, larger mammals
(20:50):
that eat these things for food, like this is their food,
um that the cats are are killing and eating in
some cases or sometimes just killing. That's right. And we
talked a lot about the trickle down effect of removing
anything from an ecosystem. And certainly birds are a vital
part of any ecosystem. How they uh you know, spread
the seed and uh pollination, like everything ends up being
(21:15):
affected when you start extincting extincting m sure, extincting birds. Sure.
And so I know it sounds very much like we're
teeing off on cats or not. That's not the point.
The point is to kind of get across that what
you think of as like a lovable cuddle bug of
an animal actually does have negative impacts on the ecosystem.
(21:39):
In particular the ones that are feral, the ones that
are unowned, the ones that don't have a home to
go to, the ones that um that it turns out
we have zero idea of exactly how many there are
the feral cat populations. That's right. Uh, should we take
a break? Sure, all right, we'll take our second break
(22:00):
here and we'll talk a little bit more about the
problem in some solutions right after this. So there are
(22:30):
about eighty six million pet cats in the United States,
and uh, and I know I've talked about this before.
About of those cats are either full time outdoor cats
as your pet or uh, do you let your cat outside,
you know, for large parts of the day or whatever.
(22:51):
Indoor outdoor cats, Um that you know, it's it's a problem.
I don't think people should let their cats out side.
I think if you have a pet cat, it should
be an indoor only cat because of the lizards and
the birds and the mammals that they kill, because of
the disease that they can spread. I've always been an
(23:11):
indoor cat person since I've been an adult. I grew
up having outdoor cats and there was a constant flood
of dead animals on our front porch, you know, all
the time, and it was pretty horrifying as a kid
to grow up with that kind of thing. But um,
this is one of the situations where you know, we
don't like to get on our high horse very often,
but you should keep your cats inside. And if and
(23:32):
not wanting to deal with the litter box is your issue,
then you might want to rethink your while you have
cats Martha Stewart hawks one where like they send you
a new fresh litter box every however long and then
you just pack up the one throw it away. Yeah,
I mean it stinks. I hate cleaning up the litter
box more than anything. But I love birds and uh
(23:54):
and chipmunks more than I hate cleaning out the litter box.
That's a really good way to put it, chuck. So
that's just free roaming cats is what they what they're called,
what what you described. It's like they have a house
to go to, they have people that feed them at
that house. They're considered a pet, but they're allowed to
run around the neighborhood as much as they like. Um. So,
(24:18):
if we have about eighties six million cats um that
are our pets, intent of them are roaming outdoors. That's
a significant number. But from the censuses, the studies that
have been conducted over decades, UM, the feral cat population
(24:38):
vastly seems to outnumber the free roaming cat population. Some
studies say, no, it's about the same. Maybe are probably
a little more feral cats, maybe thirty million. That is
the lowest I've been able to come up with. His
thirty million. That's the lowest estimate I've seen across the
entire internet. I went everywhere on the Internet, and the
(25:01):
lowest I saw was thirty million. Some sources put it
more in line with about the total number of pet cats,
that there's about eighty million feral cats running around again
the United States alone, just the US UM and that
if if that is the case, um, then you really
do start to get into some really big numbers really fast.
(25:24):
About how how much of an effect those that eighty
million feral cats uh could have on local bird and
small mammal populations. Yeah. And you know if a cat,
if a feral cat makes it to adulthood, which uh,
you know, like I said, the pretty high percentage die
before six months of age. But if they do make
(25:44):
it to adulthood, they are very efficient killers. And there
are no natural predators for cats. Uh. And you might think, well, no,
there's plenty things that can kill a cat. There are,
but their populations like you know, a cougar or something.
There aren't many of those left anymore. Those populations have
been decimated because of all the reasons that that might happen,
(26:06):
And what you end up with is a lot of
feral cats with UM with nothing hunting them, but they're
hunting everything else. Well. I found a two thousand thirteen
Ohio state study and they found that UM urban coyotes.
We did in another episode on coyotes, remember UM. Well,
as their numbers are growing and growing, they're actually keeping
(26:27):
feral cat populations in check. And as a result, some
bird species, small mammal species are are UM. Their numbers
are rebounding because urban coyotes UM tend to keep feral
cats at bay, like feral cats avoid them like the plague.
The thing is is coyotes tend to avoid humans. So
(26:48):
the feral cats have just been hanging around buildings, offices, businesses,
like human built areas and avoiding kind of more natural
urban areas like woods and parks and tree forested areas,
that kind of thing where the coyotes hang out. So
the wildlife is protected in the in the forested woody
areas of the city, but there there pray like around
(27:14):
human habitation like buildings and offices and stuff, which makes sense.
So we've outlined the problem. Uh. It is really sad
because I love cats and I don't like the idea
of cats being a problem. Um, but they are. So
what are the solutions? The solutions you're leaving that to me? Huh,
we'll both talk about it. But so one of the
(27:38):
solutions that UM, and this is if you're if you're
a cat advocate and activist, you're probably very much in
favor of uh type of approach called trapped now to
release TNR programs. These were developed the earliest I saw
is in the late nineties. UM. Where you if you're
(28:00):
a uh like an animal, um uh animal, what's animal
control like for a county or a city or something
like that? If you have a trap nooter release program, Uh,
if you find a cat, UM, you capture it, you
take it to the shelter, the vet there, spas or
nooters the cat they clipped the tip of the cat's
(28:21):
ear off and then you release it back into the
wild feral cat. UM. And as they're doing this, the
point of trapped neoter release is that the cat is
not euthanized. So it's like an end to euthanasia as
far as animal shelters. Like you know before trap nooter release,
if a cat got picked up by animal control and
made it to the animal shelter, that was it for
(28:42):
the cat. This is a chance to give cats the
the opportunity to live their life out, but you've taken
away their ability to reproduce. So you're now managing the
reproduction rate of a feral cat colony. And if you
get your hands on enough of these feral cats, and
you spay and neuter enough of them, and you keep
up with it fast enough, studies have shown that you
(29:02):
have a really good chance of stabilizing and then eventually
diminishing the feral cats in your area. Yeah, and there
have been a lot of studies on this. UM. It
was one in twenty nineteen that found over a decade
UH it's called high intensity TNR was very successful at
reducing feral cat populations. UM there's high density and low
(29:24):
density TNR. And the idea it seems to shake out
is that unless you are doing high density, unless you're hitting,
unless you're getting to like s of the population, then
they say you might as well not even be doing it. Uh,
so high intensity TNR really works. And then in this
one study, it had a couple of other interesting parts
(29:47):
to it, is they weren't just measuring how many feral
cats were out there, but they're trying to do studies
that like say, hey, we want healthy cat population, so
let's look at harm reduction for feral cats. So if
you have over a population and too many feral cats,
then it's there's a head points out. There's a lot
(30:08):
of misery going around. They struggle to find food more. Uh,
they spread disease more. They are constantly pregnant. Cats reproduce
like bunnies do. Uh, they can have up to three
litters a year and up to you know twelve the
fifteen cats per litter. And you know these cats walking
around constantly pregnant, constantly giving birth to kittens that don't
live more than six months, constantly looking for food because
(30:32):
they're overstressed. Is that's that's not if you're a cat lover. Again,
that's not what you want. And so they tried to
measure the harm reduction and they found that high tensity
I'm sorry, high intensity TNR reduce preventable cat deaths by
or thirty times yeah, thirty times, not thirty times fewer
(30:53):
preventable cat deaths. And they define preventable cat deaths by
cats that were picked up and euthanized at a shelter
or cats that died before reaching adulthood. And cats have
a really high UM mortality rate for young cats. UM.
I saw a study from two thousand three or four
that found UM a mortality rate of about forty eight
(31:16):
percent within three months of birth and seventy percent within
six months of birth. And this is you want to
talk about harm reduction. UM. The most common cause of
death was trauma. So they were getting malled by dogs
or eagles or owls. Yeah, getting hit by cars. Um.
(31:37):
So it is a really harsh, unhappy life for feral cats.
And the premise of TNR is, Okay, we can actually
lead to a reduction in these kittens that are being
born in these horrible conditions, living three months and then
getting malled by a neighborhood owl or something like that.
Like that's that's a bonus, that's a plus. But you
(31:58):
hit on something that's really important, Chuck that there is
a pretty decent amount of research on Actually that's not true.
There's not that much research on the effectiveness of trapped
now to release, but the studies that have been done
on them that are high quality studies do emphasize that. No,
(32:19):
there's definitely a threshold to where you're just completely wasting
time and energy, and even worse than that if you're
not hitting I think what you say about the sevent
threshold of spaying and new during feral cats in a
given colony. If you're not hitting that mark, you're doing
worse than nothing, because the people who are aware of
(32:41):
t n R, the TNR program in your city and county,
think you're doing something but not. It's worse than doing
nothing because if everyone knows you're not doing anything, then
people might say we got to do something. But if
they think you're doing something but you're not actually really
doing anything, that's harmful. And that's ultimately harmful not just
to these kittens that are being were by that like that,
but also to the um, the birds and small mammals
(33:04):
that those kittens are eating within their three to six
months on earth. That's right. Uh. T and R is expensive.
It takes a lot of time. You know, trapping and
trapping any animal is hard. Like one of our dogs Charlie.
We we trapped it was a feral dog in the woods,
and it took five days to trap these dogs. It's
it's a commitment to trap an animal. Wait anut, wait
(33:25):
a minute, you have a dog that you trapped that
was ferial. Yeah, yeah, Charlie, I didn't know that. Yeah, Charlie,
we found in the woods with four other dogs and
just you know, these dogs would not come near anybody
when they were puppies, and we we spent with our friends,
uh A, Dare and Elliott spent uh I think you
(33:47):
have like five days trying to trap these dogs and
Charlie was the last one that was holding out that
we could not get and a Burger King cheeseburger is
what finally did it. And Charlie spent the first as
a result, spent the first six years of her life
very afraid of people and would just do rounders through
our house when people would come over and not come
near anybody. But since my daughter came along, were people
(34:10):
at the house and just over time, she's just the sweetest,
sweetest girl now and goes up to everybody after like
twenty seconds. And it used to take days or weeks.
Oh that's cool. It's a great success story there. But
mud imagine I have to say chuck while I can.
Just while you were describing tracking Charlie and her pals,
I just imagined that that music in that scene from
(34:32):
Planet of the Apes where they're rounding up the humans
with nets, is that basically what was going on. Now
we had a big cage, traps on horseback, like dog
goes in to get food and then the door swing shut.
But Charlie was very smart and Charlie just durned thirteen,
so oh, happy birthday. But a long way of saying
(34:54):
that trapping an animal takes a lot of time and
cats are super smart, and uh, it' time consuming. If
it's expensive, and TNR is just it's hard to get
a lot of people rallying around it and funding funding it,
especially if you're expecting, like the county to fund it,
like most of that stuff is going to come from donations.
(35:15):
Plus also, if you're a wildlife or conservation biologists, you
might say, no, I don't want to do TNR at all.
Like these cats, like let's say you pick one up
at six months and you neuter it and release it
into a feral colony. Most of those feral colonies are
managed by the city or the county, meaning that they're
fed right, which ends up attracting more abandoned cats that
(35:39):
haven't been neutered or spade yet. And then worse than that,
let's say these cats live an extra four or five years,
how many animals do they kill? Yeah, they're not reproducing,
but you're releasing them back out to kill these birds
and mammals. And those biologists say this is too big
of a problem to to take up t nur um programs.
(35:59):
We need to do something else. And everybody says, okay,
well what else? What can we do? And the biologists
clear their throats and like kind of like put their
hands in their pockets and look at one another and say, like,
who's who wants to say it? And uh, the one
who's on his phone not paying attention to suddenly realizes
everyone else has taken a step back and he's he's up,
(36:20):
oh boy, oh and that's me. Um. Yeah, it's it's
a terrible thing. But the other solution, uh, is that
you know, I don't even want to say it, but
it's killing cats. Australia does this pretty effectively. Uh. In
(36:40):
they begin using a poison. Here's the deal. His cats
probably won't eat poison. So they have these traps where
a cat will go in and it will spray their
fur with poison. The cats groom themselves by looking their fur,
they ingest the poison and they die. Uh and this
is you know, Ed points out. He's like, listen, this
is uh. No one cries for the dead rats and
(37:03):
the dead mice, but uh, you know, dead cats is
You're going to get some public outrage, yes, for sure.
And there's I mean there's a lot that's mixed up
with that one. You know, we've chosen cats. There's like
only just a small handful of animals on the planet.
Out of all the animals on the planet, there's such
a select group that we've said, come come live in
(37:25):
our human world, our human culture, and cats are one
of the top ones. I mean, like cats are pets.
Come into our house, right, yeah, have my milk. And
again the cats like, please, this is really bad for me.
I can't I can't turn it away. Please stop tempting me.
But it's that's a huge part of it. So like
even even knowing that cats are out there having this
(37:50):
huge effect on on birds and mammals. Um and and
like possibly creating species extinction. Um, it's still like that
that doesn't just trigger something in us humans like, oh, well,
then we gotta get rid of cats. That's just not
that's just not how it works. Um. But that's what
(38:12):
a lot of biologists suggest we do, and not get
rid of all cats, but you know, get rid of
feral cats, like get do away with t n our
programs and instead go back to if you pick a
cat up, you take it in and euthanize it. And
that's that because not only is it not reproducing any longer,
it's also not killing small animals in the time where
(38:32):
between where it's picked up in in spade and neutered
and then released back into the wild and then the
time that it dies of whatever cause. You know. But again,
how are you ever going to get anybody behind something
like that? We even want to get behind something like that?
And like, is that is that a thing that humans
would want to take on? Like, Okay, we've got this
(38:54):
big problem. We need to handle it. Um. If we
handle it this way, we can probably handle basically once
and for all. Um. But is that something we want
to do? Is that? Is that okay to do. Yeah,
I mean these are the big questions. I hope you're
not looking to me for an answer. No, I mean
it's unfortunately, it's definitely rhetorical right now. I mean some
(39:14):
people would answer obviously one way or another. But I
think there's a lot of people who are like, man,
I really do care about birds, and I really do
care about chipmunks and biodiversity, and I really don't like
invasive species. Like what am I to do? You know,
at the very least, if you have outdoor cats, bring
him inside. Yeah. And that's another thing too. Is one
(39:36):
of the things that that you would have to do
part and parcel with this is you know, in most
cities and counties you have to get a license to
have a dog. You don't necessarily have to do that
for a cat. You could start creating laws like that,
create leash laws for cats, like really step it up
and say, we love cats. You can have a cat,
but you have to keep your cat in the house.
If your cats out of the house, you have to
(39:56):
keep your cat on a leash. If a cat's feeral,
it's and get picked up. Um. So there's yeah, there's
there's stuff you can do it's just a question of
will is what it is. Yeah, and you know, uh,
when we said when I said that, before I got
met with emails of but my cat loves being outside.
They all they do is want to be outside. It's
(40:17):
because they want to go kill things almost exclusively. Like
cats love to lay in the sunshine. But that's why
you'll find them on sunny spots inside your house. And
those sunny spots are just fine. Um. The cats want
to go out and kill things. That's why they scratch
at the door if you let them out once. And uh,
you know, I know I'm finding an uphill battle here,
(40:37):
but I love cats and I hate the idea of
running over a cat in my car. That's very traumatizing
for an individual in a family. UM, and the cat Welsh. Sure.
Uh so that's where I stand. Go ahead and email
me if you're mad at me. So there's there's UM
a group of vocal critics and opponents to the very
(40:59):
UM people who who produced these studies starting in two
thousand thirteen, and basically anybody who who criticizes tn R programs,
UM who say this, these studies that are getting all
of this media exposure, they're based on like bad science.
Their numbers are inflated, they're basically making all this stuff up. UM.
(41:22):
One of the arguments that they make is that cats
UM tend to prey on old or weak um members
of like bird or small mammal species that probably wouldn't
have made it to reproduction time anyway, so they're not
actually having an effect on the population. And there's answers
to all these two that they they've had. There's actually
(41:44):
like there's a flame war going on between this group
of wildlife biologists and specific group of like cat advocates UM,
and they're like answering one another and calling one another out. UM.
But one of the answers to that is, well, okay,
that's still there's still animals that are suffering harm because
cats are killing them. Even if they were going to
die anyway, they're still being mauled by a cat. And
(42:08):
then also, what data are you basing that on that
cats tend to kill infirm and weak members of species?
Like where did that come from? So each side, in
classic twenties fashion, is accusing the other of um basically
have like like junk like basing all their stuff on
(42:28):
junk science, making things up, making kind of character attacks
being snyed one another. It's just a beautifully twenties twenties argument,
you know. So it's it's interesting to read about. But
then you step back and you think this is really
serious stuff. We need to do something. Everybody says, we've
got to do something, either a good t in our
program or something. We can't just keep going on like this. Yeah,
(42:53):
because doing nothing creates a uh again, colonies of feral
cats that are not living their best life. Right? Oh,
you got anything else? No, not right now? Okay, Well,
if you want to know more about um cats as
invasive species and in particular trap nowter release programs, you
(43:16):
can read all about that stuff all over the internet.
There's a ton of it out there. And since I
said there's a ton of it out there, it's time
for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this Greenbrier Bunker. Addendum,
We heard from a few people that have been there,
taken the tour, and had other interesting things to say.
And this is from Greg Soster and Columbus. Oh hi,
(43:38):
oh okay, uh let me see here. Let me skip
the beginning. Uh. My family returned to the Greenbrier they
had previously been there in ninete uh for a Christmas
stay the time. This time the bunker was known by
the general public, and we signed up for the guided tour.
So I guess when they went in nine it was
(43:59):
still not known as as a thing, so they were
those kind of shrouded in mystery at that point. Um,
here we go. Number one. The back entrance also as
an enormous blast doors with a very long haul leading
to the under the mountain. A truck has to be
able to drive in the ear pressure when they close
it is amazing. Other interesting rooms included dennis office, surgical
(44:24):
operating room, and a crematorium, a TV studio, and a
water purification plant. Uh the answer, and we heard from
quite a few people here. Families do not go to
the bunker. Each member of Congress is an assign bunk,
and each bunk has their prescription medicines fully stocked and
spare prescription eyeglasses for everybody as well. Oh that's such
(44:47):
a great touch. Yeah, otherwise, you call Vanderbilt right. Congress
arrives by plane. There's a giant airstrip about ten miles away,
and the Army built a wide super highway from the
airport straight to the bunker. Secret Service would one run
drills to get the president to the bunker in eleven
minutes or less. Uh. And then finally it is strange
(45:07):
to drive there because uh it is. It was windy,
and it was a two lane road and then suddenly
the last two miles it's like a race track. I
remember joking my wife that the Greenbrier had a heck
of a driveway. So they're talking about the super highway
that leads right to it. And just to finish out,
Greg says the entire hotel staff in many towns, people
knew about the secret for decades, and they kept the
(45:28):
secret out of a sense of duty and pride. They
hated that when the secret was revealed by Mr ted
Gup because the pronational Trevor treasure was lost. That's pretty neat.
So who is that from? That was from Gregg in Columbus? O. Hi, Oh,
that's right, Thanks a lot, Greg, that was a good one.
Appreciate that info. Uh. And if you want to be
(45:50):
like Greg and send along some info to us, uh,
we'll try to sort through it from all the hate
mail we're getting from cat lovers. In the not too
distant future, you can wrap it up spanking on the
bottom and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(46:12):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and Welcome to the Hornet's Nest. I'm Josh,
there's Chuck Cherry's here, and this is stuff you should know.
Josh's idea. Yeah, as I was researching this, I started
(00:25):
sweating like cartoon bullets off of my forehead, like I was, um,
little orphan any or something. When she's startled or Nancy,
Nancy is a better one. Do you remember Nancy m
hmm with Lugo? Yeah? Yeah, I remember Nancy and Slugo. Yeah.
So she is one of the great overlooked comic strips
(00:47):
of all time, and she's still going on. She's got
a new breath of life in her. She's using computers
in the Internet and everything by saying great like almost
kind of subversive humor and outlook that that any um
that that Nancy always had, check it out. I haven't
looked at the funny papers in a long time. Do
(01:07):
they still have the old favorite? Yeah? But I don't
think they call them funny papers anymore because they're not funny,
and then they never worked. Plus, no one wants to
point out that it's made of paper that the comics. Yeah,
I used to love Beatle Bail. Of course, Garfield in
bloom County. And when I got a little bit older,
(01:29):
the one that has got a little political. That was
so good, Sally Forth, No, I got political, dude, Yeah,
not bloom County. But the other one that was Jon'sburry, Yeah, Doon'sburry.
Oh yeah, that one was always political. Uh. And then
Beatle Bailey. I love Beatle Bailey. What about Haggard the Horrible?
(01:49):
He was fine, a family circus I liked at the time,
but looking back, it was the least funny comic in history.
It was. It was just it was cute. Brenda Starr Trail,
Mary worth Mark trail. What was going on with that guy?
It was just a nature propaganda disguised to say a
(02:10):
comic strip really was, you know, nature propaganda, save the
Earth and all that big nature. So that's funny that
you say that, because there's there's a group of people
who are involved in today's topic that possibly refer to
their opponents as big nature. Weirdly chuck like, I don't
(02:31):
think they do, but the same sense and sensibility is
still there. Jane Austin reference second one in the in
two podcasts that's right. Uh so, yeah, can we just
cavy out this episode? You said it was a hornet's nest.
This is about cats, domestic cats being an invasive species.
(02:54):
I'm sorry, but they are. I love cats. I've got
two cats, I've always had cats, always love cats, I
will always have cats. This has nothing to do with
being anti or pro cat. It is just dissecting sort
of the scientific problem of cats in the same way
that cats dissect birds and small mammals for sport, right,
(03:17):
which we talked about a lot, but we'll talk about
it a lot more. Yeah. So I'm with you, Chuck,
and like we're you know, it is an issue, and
it's a problem. And one of the things that's contributing
to making it a problem is that the two sides
are so diametrically opposed and so over one another that
there's a there's just no conversation going on, and then
(03:38):
the general public, like you and me, Um are just
kind of blissfully unaware of this and then just get
goose every once in a while when the media kind
of picks up this issue or runs a headline or
an article about it, Um, and the idea is, like
you said that that it's pretty pretty much widely held
among wildlife and conservation biologists that cats, house cats, and
(04:01):
specifically feral cats are an invasive species around the world
and have they reak enormous havoc, including species extinction in
the habitats in our backyards and the habitats that they
inhabit um. But before we really kind of get into
that and lay out the case one way or another, um,
(04:23):
we should probably talk about the cat and where the
cat came from and why they hang out on our
backyards to begin with. That's right, we should. They came
we think from the mid mid East with not Mid
East as in Virginia. That's not the mid East. That's
the Middle East. That's the mid Atlantic. Yeah, the Middle
(04:44):
East of planet Earth, which was you know, these wildcats
from the forest called Felis sylvestris, which is interesting. I
never thought about Sylvester the cat taking Felix the cat, yeah,
or Felix taking their names from the original cats. But
that is the thought is that they came from there.
We're most likely domesticated about twelve thousand years ago, and
(05:07):
we don't know for sure, but the general thought is
once we started becoming an agriculturally based society, and we
had grain and seed to store. Then the mice and
the rats started coming around, and the wildcats started coming
around to take care of that problem, and humans were like, hey,
this is fine with us. And then over time some
(05:28):
of those cats got a little friendlier than others and
there and the people were like, oh, you like a
little scritch under the neck. Huh, well, you want to
come inside and have some milk. Shouldn't give cats milk,
But they didn't know that at a time. And that's
the best idea we have going of how cats and
initially became domesticated. Yeah, and there's evidence of, you know,
(05:50):
of cats being domesticated um that come from Cyprus, where
there are no native cats. So cat bones and cat
fossils are sensibly domesticated because they would have had to
have been taken there by humans by ship. It's possible
the cats stowed away, but it's also just as possible
that eight thousand years ago, when this cat bone on
(06:10):
Cypress is from Um, the the cat was domesticated enough
to ride along aboard a ship um with sailors. And
then there's another cat fossil from about years earlier than
that so just under ten thousand years ago, um, where
the cat was deliberately buried with the human, which strongly
(06:32):
also suggests domestication. So it's not a really big stretch
that by about twelve thou years ago and we started
storing surplus grain, that's about the time when cats and
humans really started to kind of coincide. Yeah, And I
think you had probably best described this as a mutualistic
relationship at this point, because both species are benefiting. We
(06:54):
have talked in the past about commence al um boom,
and maybe that's how one might have described it, which
is like cats are eating the mice. Humans were like, fine,
big wook, but we don't really care. But I would
say it's probably more mutualistic, don't you don't you think? Yes? Absolutely, Again,
I posit that there's no such thing as commence all
(07:15):
is um. I think both parties, somehow, some way always
are either benefited or harmed by this situation. And this
is a great example of that because if we're growing
surplus or for growing grain, we have surplus to feed
more and more people, um, and the last us through
the wind or whatever, we have these grain stores. If
(07:37):
you know, mice and rats come along and eat our grain.
That's a problem for us. And if the cats come
along and eat the mice or the rats, that solves
our problem. So the cat is getting to eat all
of this food that's showing up that these grain stores
where otherwise they would have to go and hunt all
over the place. The cats benefiting, we're benefiting mutualism. That's right.
(08:01):
I agree. Okay, Uh, you don't have to talk me
into it, buddy, Okay, lay off, then lay off. We
need T shirts. Man, do we still have T shirts? Oh?
I don't know either. I haven't seen him in a while.
We've never done a good job at promoting that stuff. No,
that's right. Uh. So here's the deal with cats as
(08:22):
an invasive species, though, is they are very uh hardy
as a species. They survive even though they don't have
a real natural range. They can live in many, many
different environments successfully. Uh. And there are obviously your your
pet cats, which are I don't think we said what
was the name of the domesticated cat. Finally, Felis catus,
(08:46):
which sounds like a bugs bunny cartoon, you know, like
when road runner would yeah, would they freeze frame? You know,
it's basically what they would write. But that's it was
totally unimaginative as it gets. So you've got your your
feral cats, and you've got your cats that live inside
houses but also freely rome outside like uh, like, oh,
(09:09):
I have a pet cat, but it never comes inside
because I don't like changing litter boxes. So we have
outdoor cats. And then there's the feral cat. And those
are the two cats that are causing problems. Uh. And
they are very much different and this is from the grabster.
He points out they're very different than other quote unquote
domestic invasive species that you might have as a pet,
because we talked about the Burmese python problem in Florida.
(09:33):
Those aren't truly domesticated. Uh. And then there are feral
dog populations in the world, and they do cause problems,
but not like cats do. No, definitely not so Um.
Apparently there's also like a really good case that's made
that cats aren't truly domesticated either, which rings a bell
(09:53):
to me from our animal Domestication episode. Yeah, I think
I remember that. I think they're considered semi domestic actually
person intense and perfect basically or no, they just come
and go as they please. There they hang around us
as much as they want to, you know. All right, Well,
speaking of hanging out, let's take a little break and
we'll get to the grizzly details of what these cats do,
because even though you've said it before, you might not
(10:15):
have heard that episode. You might think, what would my
sweet little cat do if let outside besides just creep around. Well,
we'll tell you what they'll do right after this, all right, Chuck. So,
(10:47):
I think anybody who owns a cat that's not indoor
cat UM has had some experience or other where their
cat has shown up on their doorstep with a present
of a bird, mouse, a small road, and baby squirrel
um the baby seal, depending on where you are, but
some some little animal where the cat is saying either hey, UM,
(11:11):
I want you to have this, I really appreciate all
of the fancy feast. Or they theorize that possibly the
cat is UM keeping a toy that it was playing
with earlier. It's brought home to like hang onto, or
it's it's um following and it's UM, I guess kind
of evolutionary impulse to teach other cats how to hunt.
(11:33):
It's teaching you how to hunt. That's what it's bringing.
Those are the big main theories that I saw, Like,
see how it's done, buddy, Yeah, you see this bird?
Can you do that? And you may be horrified when
the cat does that. You may also be like, you know, Felix,
come on, you can't do that. Where's this bird's head anyway? Um,
(11:55):
and then just kind of forget about it, put it
out of your mind. Maybe you go to the trouble
of bearing the bird, which is nice if you do that,
but you just move along with your day. Your cat
might do that a few times a year. And if
you multiply that by the number of cats who are
roaming around, and you number multiply that by the number
of feral cats, you suddenly get into really really really
(12:17):
big numbers, and the idea of just how destructive invasive
cats are, um really kind of comes into focus. Yeah.
So here are numbers from uh about nine years ago.
And this is kind of hard to track, but they
do the best job that they can with these numbers. Uh.
(12:38):
Domestic cats, these are to say, pet cats and feral cats. Uh.
And we should say that feral cats kill about three
times is more animals and birds as domestic cats, but
between one point four in three point seven billion with
a B birds and sit point nine and this is
(13:01):
a big range to twenty point seven billion mammals a year.
This is every single year. And you found some more
stats that really kind of put a cherry on top here. Uh.
Rodents are linked to the extinction of seventy five different species.
Cats are linked to the extinction of sixty three different
(13:23):
species where they have completely been extinct, forty bird species,
twenty one mammal species, and two reptile species. Right, So, UM,
we should say that the UM the species extinction that's global.
They think the that those numbers that you said between
(13:46):
up to around four billion birds and as many as
UM twenties plus billion mammals every year. Chuck, that's in
the United States alone, and not only in the United
States one that's to the contiguous forty eight states alone
every year. That's what this two thousand and thirteen study
(14:07):
between Smithsonian Institute and UM the US Fish and Wildlife
Service concluded. Right, So there are people and you know,
we'll get to you know, some of the possible solutions
later on. But if you talk to the head of
the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center UM and named Pete Mara.
He will say very clearly that there should be a
(14:29):
zero tolerance for free ranging cats. Uh, they should be trapped,
they should be removed and not returned um and then
goes on to say more things that are a little
more grizzly should be done if you have no other choices,
which is euthanasia, um, professional hunters, poisons, stuff like that.
(14:51):
But you know that sounds and it is super harsh,
and if you're a cat person, you're just like horrified
right now. But what about the bird people? You know?
Right So that's why there's the opposition on one side
or wildlife biologists and conservationists and on the other side,
you know, cat advocates and activists, and they're they're butting
(15:12):
heads over this, and it's like a really big it's
a it's a huge issue one way or another. Uh.
And one one side is saying just leave them alone.
On the other side's like, no, we can't leave them
alone or else they're going to continue to create um
species extinctions and kill billions and billions of birds and
small mammals every year. And there's a lot of ways
that they might do this. There's a story of a
(15:35):
cat named Tibbles. It was a single female cat who
arrived on a little island off of New Zealand called
Steven's Island in the eighteen nineties. There were no cats there.
In fact, there were no predatory mammals, so much so
that the little Steven's Island wrend lost its ability to fly.
It had no reason to fly. It had all the
(15:55):
food it needed on the island, it didn't need to
escape predation. So um, they lost their ability to fly
and became one of just three flightless songbirds in the world.
And now we have two species of flightless songbirds in
the world thanks to Tibbles and the litter that she had.
That's right, Tibbles arrived pregnant, and I mean this is
(16:16):
a very clear cut case of one pregnant cat showed
up and literally Tibbles in the offspring made the Stevens
Island rand no more. It is completely extinct. Yeah, and
so that is that's one single instance where they can
say this cat did this. And I've even seen it,
like said, in places like this, the legend goes or
(16:39):
the story goes or something like that. So I'm not
certain exactly how well documented it is. Um and more
to the point, even if that is a accurate it's
really difficult to extrapolate that onto you know, the rest
of the world, onto wildlife in general. There's a lot
of factors and a lot of pressures the go into
(17:00):
a species going extinct. But from what I'm seeing, the
conservation biologists and wildlife biologists who are UM doing meta
analyzes of you know, smaller studies and kind of putting
the numbers together, they typically tend to UM to make
suppositions on the lower end. So these numbers may actually
(17:22):
be under reported, they may be much higher UM than
what we think. But the upshot of it is that
there seems to be a UM. Cats seem to be,
if not directly or solely responsible, in some cases, they
are largely responsible for some species extinction. That's right. Um
(17:43):
Cats also spread disease. If you look at rabies in twoteens,
not that long ago, cats accounted for six of all
rabid domestic animals in the United States. UM. So, like,
I don't know, people talk about like possums and raccoons
and they're just and rats and they're like, oh god,
(18:03):
there you know, rabbit animals. Yet they will feed a
stray you know feral cat, which is something that even
you know, animal people say you shouldn't do because that
just means there will reproduce and there will be more
feral cats. And feral cats don't do so well. They uh,
they struggle to live and they get they get hurt,
(18:24):
and they get hit by cars and they get run over,
and I think, uh, a large percentage of the litter
doesn't even make it past six months. So if you
love cats, you shouldn't be feeding feral cats. Yeah, it's
a little you know, it's hard to wrap your head
around it, but that's if you want a healthy population
of cats, you shouldn't feed feral cats. Right. It is
(18:44):
does seem very paradoxical and even mean. But we'll get
into a little more. Y Um. But one of the
things you said about effects cats can have on the ecosystem,
especially feral cats, um is that they in particular spread
um toxoplasma guy in the um, which we had an
entire episode on years and years and years ago. But um,
(19:06):
it's a it's a type of parasite that can affect um,
that can create neurological symptoms and humans. It can. It's
pretty rare that it actually does that. But it can
cause birth effects in children, uh, in fetuses, which is
why you're pregnant. You're advised stay away from litter boxes
or handling cat feces, you know, in general, which is
(19:26):
just good advice generally, um, because of toxoplasma UM. And
it actually can kill other animals too, right, oh sure, uh,
And you know it spreads through those feces. So any
warm blooded I mean we we can get infected. You know,
humans can and do get toxic. I'm sure I have
(19:46):
toxoplasmosis by this point, Um, any warm blooded animal can
get it. And yeah, it can. It can kill uh,
animals as large as a seal. Yes. And the reason
why cat are so important into this chain is the
UM T gandhi UM eggs can only reproduce or the
(20:08):
the parasite can only reproduce in the gut of a cat.
So if you take cats out of the equation, if
you take cats that are roaming around the landscape pooping everywhere,
you take um toxoplasmosis out of the equation largely too. UM.
And then lastly, chuck one of the other things in
addition to actually you know, wreaking havoc on bird and
(20:30):
small mammal and also vertebrate or um reptile and amphibian
populations too. Um by directly eating them or killing them
for sport, they're they're having an indirect effect on some
other native populations of like hawks, owls, um, larger mammals
(20:50):
that eat these things for food, like this is their food,
um that the cats are are killing and eating in
some cases or sometimes just killing. That's right. And we
talked a lot about the trickle down effect of removing
anything from an ecosystem. And certainly birds are a vital
part of any ecosystem. How they uh you know, spread
the seed and uh pollination, like everything ends up being
(21:15):
affected when you start extincting extincting m sure, extincting birds. Sure.
And so I know it sounds very much like we're
teeing off on cats or not. That's not the point.
The point is to kind of get across that what
you think of as like a lovable cuddle bug of
an animal actually does have negative impacts on the ecosystem.
(21:39):
In particular the ones that are feral, the ones that
are unowned, the ones that don't have a home to
go to, the ones that um that it turns out
we have zero idea of exactly how many there are
the feral cat populations. That's right. Uh, should we take
a break? Sure, all right, we'll take our second break
(22:00):
here and we'll talk a little bit more about the
problem in some solutions right after this. So there are
(22:30):
about eighty six million pet cats in the United States,
and uh, and I know I've talked about this before.
About of those cats are either full time outdoor cats
as your pet or uh, do you let your cat outside,
you know, for large parts of the day or whatever.
(22:51):
Indoor outdoor cats, Um that you know, it's it's a problem.
I don't think people should let their cats out side.
I think if you have a pet cat, it should
be an indoor only cat because of the lizards and
the birds and the mammals that they kill, because of
the disease that they can spread. I've always been an
(23:11):
indoor cat person since I've been an adult. I grew
up having outdoor cats and there was a constant flood
of dead animals on our front porch, you know, all
the time, and it was pretty horrifying as a kid
to grow up with that kind of thing. But um,
this is one of the situations where you know, we
don't like to get on our high horse very often,
but you should keep your cats inside. And if and
(23:32):
not wanting to deal with the litter box is your issue,
then you might want to rethink your while you have
cats Martha Stewart hawks one where like they send you
a new fresh litter box every however long and then
you just pack up the one throw it away. Yeah,
I mean it stinks. I hate cleaning up the litter
box more than anything. But I love birds and uh
(23:54):
and chipmunks more than I hate cleaning out the litter box.
That's a really good way to put it, chuck. So
that's just free roaming cats is what they what they're called,
what what you described. It's like they have a house
to go to, they have people that feed them at
that house. They're considered a pet, but they're allowed to
run around the neighborhood as much as they like. Um. So,
(24:18):
if we have about eighties six million cats um that
are our pets, intent of them are roaming outdoors. That's
a significant number. But from the censuses, the studies that
have been conducted over decades, UM, the feral cat population
(24:38):
vastly seems to outnumber the free roaming cat population. Some
studies say, no, it's about the same. Maybe are probably
a little more feral cats, maybe thirty million. That is
the lowest I've been able to come up with. His
thirty million. That's the lowest estimate I've seen across the
entire internet. I went everywhere on the Internet, and the
(25:01):
lowest I saw was thirty million. Some sources put it
more in line with about the total number of pet cats,
that there's about eighty million feral cats running around again
the United States alone, just the US UM and that
if if that is the case, um, then you really
do start to get into some really big numbers really fast.
(25:24):
About how how much of an effect those that eighty
million feral cats uh could have on local bird and
small mammal populations. Yeah. And you know if a cat,
if a feral cat makes it to adulthood, which uh,
you know, like I said, the pretty high percentage die
before six months of age. But if they do make
(25:44):
it to adulthood, they are very efficient killers. And there
are no natural predators for cats. Uh. And you might think, well, no,
there's plenty things that can kill a cat. There are,
but their populations like you know, a cougar or something.
There aren't many of those left anymore. Those populations have
been decimated because of all the reasons that that might happen,
(26:06):
And what you end up with is a lot of
feral cats with UM with nothing hunting them, but they're
hunting everything else. Well. I found a two thousand thirteen
Ohio state study and they found that UM urban coyotes.
We did in another episode on coyotes, remember UM. Well,
as their numbers are growing and growing, they're actually keeping
(26:27):
feral cat populations in check. And as a result, some
bird species, small mammal species are are UM. Their numbers
are rebounding because urban coyotes UM tend to keep feral
cats at bay, like feral cats avoid them like the plague.
The thing is is coyotes tend to avoid humans. So
(26:48):
the feral cats have just been hanging around buildings, offices, businesses,
like human built areas and avoiding kind of more natural
urban areas like woods and parks and tree forested areas,
that kind of thing where the coyotes hang out. So
the wildlife is protected in the in the forested woody
areas of the city, but there there pray like around
(27:14):
human habitation like buildings and offices and stuff, which makes sense.
So we've outlined the problem. Uh. It is really sad
because I love cats and I don't like the idea
of cats being a problem. Um, but they are. So
what are the solutions? The solutions you're leaving that to me? Huh,
we'll both talk about it. But so one of the
(27:38):
solutions that UM, and this is if you're if you're
a cat advocate and activist, you're probably very much in
favor of uh type of approach called trapped now to
release TNR programs. These were developed the earliest I saw
is in the late nineties. UM. Where you if you're
(28:00):
a uh like an animal, um uh animal, what's animal
control like for a county or a city or something
like that? If you have a trap nooter release program, Uh,
if you find a cat, UM, you capture it, you
take it to the shelter, the vet there, spas or
nooters the cat they clipped the tip of the cat's
(28:21):
ear off and then you release it back into the
wild feral cat. UM. And as they're doing this, the
point of trapped neoter release is that the cat is
not euthanized. So it's like an end to euthanasia as
far as animal shelters. Like you know before trap nooter release,
if a cat got picked up by animal control and
made it to the animal shelter, that was it for
(28:42):
the cat. This is a chance to give cats the
the opportunity to live their life out, but you've taken
away their ability to reproduce. So you're now managing the
reproduction rate of a feral cat colony. And if you
get your hands on enough of these feral cats, and
you spay and neuter enough of them, and you keep
up with it fast enough, studies have shown that you
(29:02):
have a really good chance of stabilizing and then eventually
diminishing the feral cats in your area. Yeah, and there
have been a lot of studies on this. UM. It
was one in twenty nineteen that found over a decade
UH it's called high intensity TNR was very successful at
reducing feral cat populations. UM there's high density and low
(29:24):
density TNR. And the idea it seems to shake out
is that unless you are doing high density, unless you're hitting,
unless you're getting to like s of the population, then
they say you might as well not even be doing it. Uh,
so high intensity TNR really works. And then in this
one study, it had a couple of other interesting parts
(29:47):
to it, is they weren't just measuring how many feral
cats were out there, but they're trying to do studies
that like say, hey, we want healthy cat population, so
let's look at harm reduction for feral cats. So if
you have over a population and too many feral cats,
then it's there's a head points out. There's a lot
(30:08):
of misery going around. They struggle to find food more. Uh,
they spread disease more. They are constantly pregnant. Cats reproduce
like bunnies do. Uh, they can have up to three
litters a year and up to you know twelve the
fifteen cats per litter. And you know these cats walking
around constantly pregnant, constantly giving birth to kittens that don't
live more than six months, constantly looking for food because
(30:32):
they're overstressed. Is that's that's not if you're a cat lover. Again,
that's not what you want. And so they tried to
measure the harm reduction and they found that high tensity
I'm sorry, high intensity TNR reduce preventable cat deaths by
or thirty times yeah, thirty times, not thirty times fewer
(30:53):
preventable cat deaths. And they define preventable cat deaths by
cats that were picked up and euthanized at a shelter
or cats that died before reaching adulthood. And cats have
a really high UM mortality rate for young cats. UM.
I saw a study from two thousand three or four
that found UM a mortality rate of about forty eight
(31:16):
percent within three months of birth and seventy percent within
six months of birth. And this is you want to
talk about harm reduction. UM. The most common cause of
death was trauma. So they were getting malled by dogs
or eagles or owls. Yeah, getting hit by cars. Um.
(31:37):
So it is a really harsh, unhappy life for feral cats.
And the premise of TNR is, Okay, we can actually
lead to a reduction in these kittens that are being
born in these horrible conditions, living three months and then
getting malled by a neighborhood owl or something like that.
Like that's that's a bonus, that's a plus. But you
(31:58):
hit on something that's really important, Chuck that there is
a pretty decent amount of research on Actually that's not true.
There's not that much research on the effectiveness of trapped
now to release, but the studies that have been done
on them that are high quality studies do emphasize that. No,
(32:19):
there's definitely a threshold to where you're just completely wasting
time and energy, and even worse than that if you're
not hitting I think what you say about the sevent
threshold of spaying and new during feral cats in a
given colony. If you're not hitting that mark, you're doing
worse than nothing, because the people who are aware of
(32:41):
t n R, the TNR program in your city and county,
think you're doing something but not. It's worse than doing
nothing because if everyone knows you're not doing anything, then
people might say we got to do something. But if
they think you're doing something but you're not actually really
doing anything, that's harmful. And that's ultimately harmful not just
to these kittens that are being were by that like that,
but also to the um, the birds and small mammals
(33:04):
that those kittens are eating within their three to six
months on earth. That's right. Uh. T and R is expensive.
It takes a lot of time. You know, trapping and
trapping any animal is hard. Like one of our dogs Charlie.
We we trapped it was a feral dog in the woods,
and it took five days to trap these dogs. It's
it's a commitment to trap an animal. Wait anut, wait
(33:25):
a minute, you have a dog that you trapped that
was ferial. Yeah, yeah, Charlie, I didn't know that. Yeah, Charlie,
we found in the woods with four other dogs and
just you know, these dogs would not come near anybody
when they were puppies, and we we spent with our friends,
uh A, Dare and Elliott spent uh I think you
(33:47):
have like five days trying to trap these dogs and
Charlie was the last one that was holding out that
we could not get and a Burger King cheeseburger is
what finally did it. And Charlie spent the first as
a result, spent the first six years of her life
very afraid of people and would just do rounders through
our house when people would come over and not come
near anybody. But since my daughter came along, were people
(34:10):
at the house and just over time, she's just the sweetest,
sweetest girl now and goes up to everybody after like
twenty seconds. And it used to take days or weeks.
Oh that's cool. It's a great success story there. But
mud imagine I have to say chuck while I can.
Just while you were describing tracking Charlie and her pals,
I just imagined that that music in that scene from
(34:32):
Planet of the Apes where they're rounding up the humans
with nets, is that basically what was going on. Now
we had a big cage, traps on horseback, like dog
goes in to get food and then the door swing shut.
But Charlie was very smart and Charlie just durned thirteen,
so oh, happy birthday. But a long way of saying
(34:54):
that trapping an animal takes a lot of time and
cats are super smart, and uh, it' time consuming. If
it's expensive, and TNR is just it's hard to get
a lot of people rallying around it and funding funding it,
especially if you're expecting, like the county to fund it,
like most of that stuff is going to come from donations.
(35:15):
Plus also, if you're a wildlife or conservation biologists, you
might say, no, I don't want to do TNR at all.
Like these cats, like let's say you pick one up
at six months and you neuter it and release it
into a feral colony. Most of those feral colonies are
managed by the city or the county, meaning that they're
fed right, which ends up attracting more abandoned cats that
(35:39):
haven't been neutered or spade yet. And then worse than that,
let's say these cats live an extra four or five years,
how many animals do they kill? Yeah, they're not reproducing,
but you're releasing them back out to kill these birds
and mammals. And those biologists say this is too big
of a problem to to take up t nur um programs.
(35:59):
We need to do something else. And everybody says, okay,
well what else? What can we do? And the biologists
clear their throats and like kind of like put their
hands in their pockets and look at one another and say, like,
who's who wants to say it? And uh, the one
who's on his phone not paying attention to suddenly realizes
everyone else has taken a step back and he's he's up,
(36:20):
oh boy, oh and that's me. Um. Yeah, it's it's
a terrible thing. But the other solution, uh, is that
you know, I don't even want to say it, but
it's killing cats. Australia does this pretty effectively. Uh. In
(36:40):
they begin using a poison. Here's the deal. His cats
probably won't eat poison. So they have these traps where
a cat will go in and it will spray their
fur with poison. The cats groom themselves by looking their fur,
they ingest the poison and they die. Uh and this
is you know, Ed points out. He's like, listen, this
is uh. No one cries for the dead rats and
(37:03):
the dead mice, but uh, you know, dead cats is
You're going to get some public outrage, yes, for sure.
And there's I mean there's a lot that's mixed up
with that one. You know, we've chosen cats. There's like
only just a small handful of animals on the planet.
Out of all the animals on the planet, there's such
a select group that we've said, come come live in
(37:25):
our human world, our human culture, and cats are one
of the top ones. I mean, like cats are pets.
Come into our house, right, yeah, have my milk. And
again the cats like, please, this is really bad for me.
I can't I can't turn it away. Please stop tempting me.
But it's that's a huge part of it. So like
even even knowing that cats are out there having this
(37:50):
huge effect on on birds and mammals. Um and and
like possibly creating species extinction. Um, it's still like that
that doesn't just trigger something in us humans like, oh, well,
then we gotta get rid of cats. That's just not
that's just not how it works. Um. But that's what
(38:12):
a lot of biologists suggest we do, and not get
rid of all cats, but you know, get rid of
feral cats, like get do away with t n our
programs and instead go back to if you pick a
cat up, you take it in and euthanize it. And
that's that because not only is it not reproducing any longer,
it's also not killing small animals in the time where
(38:32):
between where it's picked up in in spade and neutered
and then released back into the wild and then the
time that it dies of whatever cause. You know. But again,
how are you ever going to get anybody behind something
like that? We even want to get behind something like that?
And like, is that is that a thing that humans
would want to take on? Like, Okay, we've got this
(38:54):
big problem. We need to handle it. Um. If we
handle it this way, we can probably handle basically once
and for all. Um. But is that something we want
to do? Is that? Is that okay to do. Yeah,
I mean these are the big questions. I hope you're
not looking to me for an answer. No, I mean
it's unfortunately, it's definitely rhetorical right now. I mean some
(39:14):
people would answer obviously one way or another. But I
think there's a lot of people who are like, man,
I really do care about birds, and I really do
care about chipmunks and biodiversity, and I really don't like
invasive species. Like what am I to do? You know,
at the very least, if you have outdoor cats, bring
him inside. Yeah. And that's another thing too. Is one
(39:36):
of the things that that you would have to do
part and parcel with this is you know, in most
cities and counties you have to get a license to
have a dog. You don't necessarily have to do that
for a cat. You could start creating laws like that,
create leash laws for cats, like really step it up
and say, we love cats. You can have a cat,
but you have to keep your cat in the house.
If your cats out of the house, you have to
(39:56):
keep your cat on a leash. If a cat's feeral,
it's and get picked up. Um. So there's yeah, there's
there's stuff you can do it's just a question of
will is what it is. Yeah, and you know, uh,
when we said when I said that, before I got
met with emails of but my cat loves being outside.
They all they do is want to be outside. It's
(40:17):
because they want to go kill things almost exclusively. Like
cats love to lay in the sunshine. But that's why
you'll find them on sunny spots inside your house. And
those sunny spots are just fine. Um. The cats want
to go out and kill things. That's why they scratch
at the door if you let them out once. And uh,
you know, I know I'm finding an uphill battle here,
(40:37):
but I love cats and I hate the idea of
running over a cat in my car. That's very traumatizing
for an individual in a family. UM, and the cat Welsh. Sure.
Uh so that's where I stand. Go ahead and email
me if you're mad at me. So there's there's UM
a group of vocal critics and opponents to the very
(40:59):
UM people who who produced these studies starting in two
thousand thirteen, and basically anybody who who criticizes tn R programs,
UM who say this, these studies that are getting all
of this media exposure, they're based on like bad science.
Their numbers are inflated, they're basically making all this stuff up. UM.
(41:22):
One of the arguments that they make is that cats
UM tend to prey on old or weak um members
of like bird or small mammal species that probably wouldn't
have made it to reproduction time anyway, so they're not
actually having an effect on the population. And there's answers
to all these two that they they've had. There's actually
(41:44):
like there's a flame war going on between this group
of wildlife biologists and specific group of like cat advocates UM,
and they're like answering one another and calling one another out. UM.
But one of the answers to that is, well, okay,
that's still there's still animals that are suffering harm because
cats are killing them. Even if they were going to
die anyway, they're still being mauled by a cat. And
(42:08):
then also, what data are you basing that on that
cats tend to kill infirm and weak members of species?
Like where did that come from? So each side, in
classic twenties fashion, is accusing the other of um basically
have like like junk like basing all their stuff on
(42:28):
junk science, making things up, making kind of character attacks
being snyed one another. It's just a beautifully twenties twenties argument,
you know. So it's it's interesting to read about. But
then you step back and you think this is really
serious stuff. We need to do something. Everybody says, we've
got to do something, either a good t in our
program or something. We can't just keep going on like this. Yeah,
(42:53):
because doing nothing creates a uh again, colonies of feral
cats that are not living their best life. Right? Oh,
you got anything else? No, not right now? Okay, Well,
if you want to know more about um cats as
invasive species and in particular trap nowter release programs, you
(43:16):
can read all about that stuff all over the internet.
There's a ton of it out there. And since I
said there's a ton of it out there, it's time
for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this Greenbrier Bunker. Addendum,
We heard from a few people that have been there,
taken the tour, and had other interesting things to say.
And this is from Greg Soster and Columbus. Oh hi,
(43:38):
oh okay, uh let me see here. Let me skip
the beginning. Uh. My family returned to the Greenbrier they
had previously been there in ninete uh for a Christmas
stay the time. This time the bunker was known by
the general public, and we signed up for the guided tour.
So I guess when they went in nine it was
(43:59):
still not known as as a thing, so they were
those kind of shrouded in mystery at that point. Um,
here we go. Number one. The back entrance also as
an enormous blast doors with a very long haul leading
to the under the mountain. A truck has to be
able to drive in the ear pressure when they close
it is amazing. Other interesting rooms included dennis office, surgical
(44:24):
operating room, and a crematorium, a TV studio, and a
water purification plant. Uh the answer, and we heard from
quite a few people here. Families do not go to
the bunker. Each member of Congress is an assign bunk,
and each bunk has their prescription medicines fully stocked and
spare prescription eyeglasses for everybody as well. Oh that's such
(44:47):
a great touch. Yeah, otherwise, you call Vanderbilt right. Congress
arrives by plane. There's a giant airstrip about ten miles away,
and the Army built a wide super highway from the
airport straight to the bunker. Secret Service would one run
drills to get the president to the bunker in eleven
minutes or less. Uh. And then finally it is strange
(45:07):
to drive there because uh it is. It was windy,
and it was a two lane road and then suddenly
the last two miles it's like a race track. I
remember joking my wife that the Greenbrier had a heck
of a driveway. So they're talking about the super highway
that leads right to it. And just to finish out,
Greg says the entire hotel staff in many towns, people
knew about the secret for decades, and they kept the
(45:28):
secret out of a sense of duty and pride. They
hated that when the secret was revealed by Mr ted
Gup because the pronational Trevor treasure was lost. That's pretty neat.
So who is that from? That was from Gregg in Columbus? O. Hi, Oh,
that's right, Thanks a lot, Greg, that was a good one.
Appreciate that info. Uh. And if you want to be
(45:50):
like Greg and send along some info to us, uh,
we'll try to sort through it from all the hate
mail we're getting from cat lovers. In the not too
distant future, you can wrap it up spanking on the
bottom and send it off to stuff podcast at iHeart
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(46:12):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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