A lot has been written by cat haters of the biased press, about the decline of songbirds and small wildlife, they love to blame it on cats.
A lot has been written too by cat lovers defending them.
This time I want to look at it from another angle and ask those who blame cats, why when cats have been around thousands of years, are they suddenly being blamed for the growing rate of birds and small wildlife dying out?
Surely if that was the case, they would have been wiped out long ago by cats, not steadily declining as they are now, especially as there are more indoor cats as time goes on and it becomes more unsafe for them outdoors..
Could it be that the cat haters just won’t admit this decline is happening because of the progress of human beings?
Ask those people why they won’t accept that the loss of habitat and the pesticides used and the pollution of the air the birds and animals breathe is to blame…..
They have no answer.
Here’s something else too, butterflies, moths,crane flies, ladybirds etc are becoming less all the time, no one can blame the decline of them on cats, can they!
Also bees are dying out too, now we all know cats don’t kill bees, surely even cat haters have to agree on that!
What about the people who think starving abandoned or feral cats have no right to kill birds the poor creatures need to eat to survive?
Do those people think sitting down to eat roast chicken or turkey born to be killed to feed people who don’t need to eat poultry to survive, is right!
I suppose they justify themselves that they are top of the food chain, well lucky them to be born as human beings, cats don’t choose to be born as cats and should never be blamed for following the instincts they were born with.
Do those cat haters who profess to care about birds approve of birds being blasted from the sky for ‘sport’ by hunters?
If so, what hypocrites they are!
Cats kill a miniscule number of birds in comparison to the amount killed directly or indirectly by people.
They also kill a miniscule number of small wild life in comparison to the amount killed by speeding uncaring motorists.
It’s time the cat haters started looking to themselves and thinking what they can do to help the environment, because one day it will be too late, they and not cats will have caused the extinction of countless species of birds and animals.
Well allellulia at last scientists are realising they can’t just assume the cause of the loss of bees because they can’t blame cats for it for once and surely they will now connect the loss of bees with the loss of birds and wild life and flying insects and look further than cats.
What’s the betting though that they won’t write articles and withdraw their allegations about cats!
I think the people in these positions of power to say such things don’t really care – they just care about keeping their jobs and following the status quo. I’m sure if a scientist showed up and challenged the general thinking they wouldn’t get very far would they. Expertize and academic isolation sucks because it cant be objective if humans are in control of it.
That is an excellent point too, Marc. Scientists tend to follow the status quo and when they don’t history shows us that they are vilified and eventually science comes around to new ideas.
It is about work and being accepted by the scientific community. Achieving a status. The truth can take a back seat.
Galileo was called a heretic because he stated that the earth moved rather than being stationary.
It’s interesting to note that just as we have been discussing other causes of bird loss a piece of relevant information has come up. There is nothing new about the role that insecticides and fungicides play in killing off insects a major food source for birds, but now scientists have proof that they cause sudden bee colony loss. I wonder what took them so long?
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/scientists-discover-another-cause-bee-deaths-and-its-really-bad-news.html
Great poster as always Ruth.
Yes as the human population grows so the bird and wildlife population both large and small declines.
People are to blame not cats but idiot scientists with cold hearts like to blame cats if they can.
They can’t blame cats for the extinction of lots of species of large wild animals can they that’s people doing that too and I for one don’t want our domestic cats ever to become extinct but that will happen one day if hose idiots keep on with their hate cat campaign.
A very good point Ruth. Why have cats suddenly been pinpointed as the cause of wildlife loss or extinction? How can cats have suddenly changed?? The answer is they haven’t. It’s human perception that has changed or perhaps we are observing a deliberate program of misinformation which has ulterior motives.
It would be very revealing to find out why this sudden “blame the cats” hysteria. Could it be from the big corporations who wish to divert attention away from the harmful effects of their products There is not much evidence of products that directly affect birds but chemicals that decimate their food supply are plentiful, as well as human activities and exploding numbers causing wildlife habitat loss. If their intention is to protect the agrochemical industry they will have to do better than blaming the cats. Their “science” is easily discredited as we have seen with that rubbishy Smithsonian study, for the simple reason it’s not true.
Exactly Harvey! Suddenly starting to blame cats does hint of an attempted cover up for other reasons.
The atmosphere must be constantly polluted by all the toxic fumes from humans, like more aeroplanes, fireworks, space rockets, barbeques, more powerful cars …you name it, the backlash from all those goes up into the air.
Most people don’t give a thought to modern life affecting bird and wild animal life and if they do they take the easy way out and believe the rubbish that the press write from biased scientific statistics.
That’s a really good point Ruth, and another brilliant poster, humans seem to think that their greed and lust to kill is their given right, they can decimate wildlife to their hearts contents because they have “dominion over all” but the thing is that it is mankind that is stamping out species of animals and birds by this very greed. As more and more land is taken, more pollution is spread, more animals are killed for sport or food eventually something has got to give. Against this cats acting on their instinct and catching a miserable few birds is a drop in the ocean, but as has been said cats are a good scapegoat and get the blame for something they are not guilty of.
Great point to make Ruth. There must have been a time when the human population was much lower when no one even dreamt of blaming cats for killing wildlife. I believe that time was not that long ago. Perhaps up to about 60 years ago or less.
The increase in world human population has speeded up over the past 50 years and it is over these years and more recently that we have seen people passing the buck for their excesses to the cat. Blaming the cat is very convenient. The cat is a ready made excuse and a means to divert attention from the big wildlife killer: humankind.
The big culprits are the most intelligent people. They are the most devious and in positions of authority and so can have the most influence.