Comment on Keeping pet cats indoors would save millions of native animals and billions of dollars. So what's stopping us?

• Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Before pesticides cats used to just starve. Everyone knows this.

  /s

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  • kbin_space_program@kbin.run ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Equally, before the post-DDT pesticides(when the decline started), housecats didn't exist, never went outside and never killed anything.

    /s

    Go look at the other reply where I sourced my opinion.

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    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You don’t think house cats existed before DDT pesticides?

      You don’t think house cats, which have existed for 3600 years, existed before 1874?…

      Do I need to math that math for you?

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      • kbin_space_program@kbin.run ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        thats my point

        If house cats were actually some kind of living natural disaster, birds would have driven extinct millenia ago. To solely blame housecats for the mass extinction of songbirds that have existed beside them for hundreds to thousands of years without any appreciable population effect is insane.

        Also while DDT has its own host of issues regarding it building up in the food chain, my concern here is the post-DDT ones.

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• kbin_space_program@kbin.run ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  ttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8640698/

  1. We didn't know or study the effects of pesticides in various wild birds. And it varies wildly between species, with chickens not being a good general case. Also that birds are considerably more affected by pesticides than mammals.

  2. Simple logic. Housecats do not have access to deep woods or exist in large populations outside of cities and suburbs in North America, yet the populations are declining there. This implies that they are not the cause of the decline.

  3. This logic is backed up by https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back#:~:text=All%20told%2C%20the%20North%20American%20bird%20population%20is,declined%20by%2053%25%2C%20or%20another%20720%20million%20birds.

  LWhich points out that it is a multitude of factors and that grassland species(i.e. farmland) are the most affected, with wetland and forest species being less affected.

  4. Further logic is that the decline is a relatively new phenomenon. But housecats killing birds is not new. Therefore something else is behind the decline, and simply keeping cats inside will not fix the issue.

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  • trk@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s a whole heap of words to say “maybe”.

    If you’re happy being a selfish piece of shit, feel free to leave your cat roam. When Mittens gets hit by a car / contracts feline aids / otherwise meets a premature death, you can rest easy knowing that akshually it was probably pesticides.

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    • kbin_space_program@kbin.run ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Say you didn't understand what any of those papers said without saying you didn't understand what those papers said.

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      • Riftinducer@aussie.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I mean, he doesn’t have to say it, your comment and the sources did a good job suggesting you only did a cursory read yourself.

        1. The first paper states that birds are less sensitive to pyrethroid based pesticides, which makes your broad statements about pesticides sketchy at best.

        2. Simple logic doesn’t work in science specifically because it’s simple and is subject to internal biases. You can’t make an assumption and appeal to intuitive reasoning without some evidence to draw that link.

        3. Your second paper doesn’t back up your claim. It states that bird population loss is a multifaceted problem. Yes, pesticide use is called out as a factor, but so too is habitat loss through urbanisation and unregulated harvesting practices, which kind of answers your point 4.

        4. These are all American sources. As a result, very little of this is applicable to the Australian biosphere beyond the most broad strokes since they dont take into account differences in local food webs, urban planning, environmental legislation etc.

        TLDR, someone is using irrelevant sources and their dislike of pesticides to justify keeping their cats outside

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