What affects us affects cats
NEWS AND VIEWS: As I buy The Times daily, I know of Carol Midgely. As well as being a columnist for The Times she occasionally helps out at her friend’s animal rescue charity. That’s nice. It tells me that she is a decent person. She went to the home of a recently deceased elderly …
Lion and tigers, the two biggest cats have the ability to regard humans as dominant if humans stare into their eyes when under attack by either. If a human stares like this is signals dominance and the cat is taken in by it as it seems they have the ability to perceive us as …
69% of Americans, which I take to be an average between women and men, compared to 66% of Britons believe that they can beat a domestic cat in an unarmed fight! If you drill down, the YouGov survey tells us that 58% of British women and 75% of British men believe that they can …
As the word at the beginning of the question is “can” I can discuss it theoretically. Theoretically a domestic cat could kill a human directly (physically) under very exceptional and infinitesimally rare circumstances but there are probably instances where domestic cats in countries other than in the West have killed humans indirectly by transferring …
NEWS AND COMMENT-FLORIDA, USA: I don’t have an awful lot on this story which is of interest to me because it’s about a domestic cat being used in a dispute between two women who apparently live together. I want to get something off my chest before I discuss the story. A lot of American …
Canada lynx do not attack humans unless there are exceptional circumstances such as rabies or perhaps a pet Canada lynx being provoked into defensively attacking their owner or a stranger in the home. This would be a rare incident. It seems to me that is more likely for a domesticated Canada lynx to attack …
The answer to the question will depend on where you live because each country has their own animal and general criminal laws. However, I would expect that what I say here will apply to all developed countries. In developing countries, the law is likely to be more slipshod. In the UK, the country’s lawmakers …
Summary: the answer to the first part of the question in the title is yes, for captive cheetahs, but infinitesimally rarely, and the answer to the second part is also yes but it would have to be an exceptional person in terms of strength and abilities to achieve it. Do cheetahs kill people? My …
