this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2026
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In Australia there is an expectation that people keep their cats inside because those little murder machine are able to decimate a significant amount of our native fauna. I was shocked when I moved to the UK for a few years to find out that a typical requirement for getting a cat there through legitimate sources included committing to letting them roam outside.
There's no fauna left there anyways, best thing I can get you is dead chicken in KFC.
There's a few, my folks have a family of bandicoots living in their backyard
Their crate collection must be in shambles.
Someone does keep stealing all their wumpa fruit ..
In Australia, I’m surprised the local fauna doesn’t decimate the cats.
In some densely populated cities, cats help control the rat population.
While they are in no way related to rodents, a lot of Australia's fauna are effectively just mice of varying sizes without the rapid breeding.
"Humans are destroying the planet and drive a lot of the fauna towards extinction. Let's blame..." spins wheel... "Cats."
Plot twist: They are there because of us! There are many reasons why biodiversity is rapidly declining. That doesn't mean that cats are not wreaking havoc on the local bird population:
Why are US numbers way off the chart for cats and windows? Is the US overrun with cats and murderous windows? How do you make sure the windows stay friendly towards humans? Do you export bad windows to Russia?
There are so many questions...
Because of population. It's basically this but comparing USA and Canada and showing it as a bar chart.
Adjusting for population the numbers should only be 10 times higher, 1.96 billion for cats and 250 million for windows. Cats are close to equal but I'm still concerned about your windows.
Don’t fucking worry about the windows. K?
US has more regions with warm climates that birds live in year round. A lot of bird species only live in Canada half the year and then migrate south for winter.
We really need to emphasize data analysis more in school, that's obvious surface-level stuff they just didn't consider.
I like how in their remediation suggestions they "gloss" over windows as an unavoidable bird genocide fact of life. Abolish windows! !fuckwindows@lemmy.world
Yeah well cats aren't native to Australia, humans brought them here so that's on us, the common house cat is an apex predator here, cat owners need to take some responsibility for their murder machines or we end up with more 20 kg feral cats that can take out a kangaroo
Nitpick, but cats aren't an "apex" predator in any environment. They are hunted by pretty much every carnivore at least as big as a coyote, including large birds of prey.
They are in New Zealand, where the problem is worse than in Australia. New Zealand has zero native land predators. There are some birds of prey that can hunt invasive stoats and rats, but cats are effectively uncontested (with the exception of humans performing population control).
Fair enough, I should know better than to use absolute statements in nature and that does highlight the delicacy of small island ecology. (It's still true for Australia though which has enough dangerous animals for the domestic cat to be firmly a "mesopredator")
They are apex predators in Australia. There are no large carnivors that take them out. Dingoes are not common, a cat would give a Goanna a run for its money, cats don't go in the water so sharks are a different environment, crocodiles live in a small portion of the country. A cat will hunt snakes, snakes will typically only defend, but not all snakes are poisonous and cats have been known to win against the poisonous ones. Wedge tailed eagles again are not everywhere and are mostly just scavengers. Emus are fucking idiots.
When cats get out here they go feral and eat everything in the immediate area. The feral cats that have been feral for generations are significantly bigger and more aggressive than a house cat, and will actively attack sheep.
There aren't enough large predators to keep their population in check. That's not the same thing as being the apex. Dingoes would be more common if they weren't so widely killed at the behest of whining farmers (we have a similar problem with gray wolves and mountain lions).
You're wrong.
A critical part of that statement is "at the top of a food chain".
Dude doesn't know what an invasive species is, or how cats got to Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyall%27s_wren