Cat superstitions – educate to suppress them

Black cat superstition in Kenya leads to cat cruelty

Cat superstitions still exist big time. They are considered to be a part of history but this is simply untrue. Nowadays superstitions surrounding the cat are tied up with a lack of knowledge of the cat and, frankly, sometimes distrust and dislike of the cat, just as was the case in medieval Europe. Education …

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Black-footed cat distribution 2022

Black-footed cat great hunter

This page was first written in 2009. I have decided to update it. It is now upgraded to the current date at the time of writing this namely 2022 (I have projected forward several days 😉). As the years roll by the distribution of this small wildcat species will shrink almost inevitably. The page …

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Serval Adaptations

Serval jumping onto prey

The serval is one of the more specialised wild cats. This means that it will have adaptations to improve survivability. The serval has the longest legs compared to overall size of all the cats. More precisely the serval’s feet are elongated. The metatarsals in the palms and soles add to the servals height to …

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Across Kenya and East Africa many people still believe domestic and stray cats are evil

Black cat superstition in Kenya leads to cat cruelty

COMMENT: Sadly, due to a lack of education, many people in Kenya, especially along the Indian Ocean coast, still believe, hundreds of years after cats were persecuted during the Middle Ages, that domestic and stray cats are evil. As the spaying and neutering of cats in Kenya is probably rare, they procreate which doesn’t …

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When Namibian farmers avoided cheetah ‘hubs’ they reduced livestock losses by 86%

Cheetah hangout - cheetah hub

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is a common sense and effective approach to substantially reducing the problem of cheetahs killing livestock in Namibia. It’s the first time I’ve seen this approach taken. Conflict between predators like the cheetah and farmers is a constant problem in Africa and it leads to the death of the predator because the farmers retaliate to protect their livestock so they poison or kill the cheetah in anyway they can. It’s about protecting their livelihood, so we can understand the attitude.

Cheetah hangout - cheetah hub
Cheetah hangout – cheetah hub. Camera trap photograph: Leibniz-IZW Cheetah Research Project via Associated Press

A study published on December 7, 2020 called Communication hubs of an asocial cat are the source of a human-carnival conflict and a carnivore conflict and key to its solution has reported that if farmers know where cheetahs congregate in what the researchers describe as “hubs” they can avoid them and farm their livestock elsewhere. When this happens the cheetahs prey on animals other than livestock and they found that livestock losses were reduced by 86%. It is a brilliant result.

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