In 2021, the reputation of the domestic cat is becoming frayed because of predation on native wildlife species. This bad publicity mainly comes out of Australia where the authorities are more concerned than in other countries about the loss of native marsupials and mammals due to predation by feral cats. They’ve got themselves a problem which is almost impossible to resolve. That’s why they have resorted to cruel attempts to exterminate them.
The problem wouldn’t have existed if a hundred years or more ago humans had selectively bred all domestic cats to be disinterested in hunting. That might sound far-fetched and certainly when domestic cats were first brought over to Australia the concept of selective breeding was in its infancy. Well, actually it hardly existed.
But we can project forwards and use our modern knowledge of behavioural genetics and how personality is inherited to use artificial selection a.k.a. selectively breed to create a domestic cat which is better able to live in the modern world and which is disinterested in attacking and killing native wildlife species. Not all domestic cats are keen hunters. There is wide spectrum of domestic cat personalities in respect of their desire to hunt. You could select foundation cats that were very poor hunters and go from there.
The Persian has a low prey hunting drive compared to other breeds so perhaps they might be a good starting point.
But this is a very big project. Selective breeding takes place for purebred cats but these are in a minority, actually a very small minority in the UK. And the focus has been on selectively breeding for appearance for the pedigree cats.
I’m thinking mainly of Australia, here, which has struggled with feral cat predation of wildlife. All feral cats started at one time many years ago as domestic cats. Now, of course, they breed in the wild but they started off as domestic cats. And I’m sure in Australia that domestic cats still become stray cats and stray cats become feral cats.
It’s an idea but one that may or probably should take root for the very long term namely that the authorities in Australia selectively breed domestic cats i.e. non-purebred cats to have a character which makes them hopeless at hunting! Only these cats should be adopted by Australians.
Further, through selective breeding, these cats would have a personality and character which made them highly suitable to full-time indoor living. In this way, projecting 50-100 years into the future, there would be no possibility of domestic and feral cats preying on native species in Australia. People need to think very long term in many aspects of their lives. One unfortunate human behavioural trait is that they have a propensity to think short-term. Instant fixes are preferred over long-term solutions. The Chinese think long-term and they are proving to be more successful than other nations.
I would hope and presume that over that period of time, through an equally bold and audacious process of mass, government funded TNR programs across the continent, that they had got under control the feral cat problem that exists today. The end result would be a resolution of their cat problem as they see it.
In parallel with that, the Australian authorities would have to improve human performance as well because it is through human behaviour that most native species are lost via habitat destruction due to commercial enterprises gobbling up habitat to which you have to add human settlements due to an expanding human population.
SOME MORE ON PREDATION:
