this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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Witches VS Patriarchy

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[–] protist@mander.xyz 154 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (6 children)

Cats and dogs are pretty serious predators. And butterflies are formidable prey, because many are poisonous. And saying "dinosaurs" is like saying "mammals." My son loves his clothes with stegasauruses and triceratops on them, which are both herbivores and prey. Almost all dinosaurs were prey, in fact.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 47 points 5 days ago (1 children)

And for that matter, a pretty big fraction of even the popular dinosaurs were prey.

[–] protist@mander.xyz 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I edited my comment to say this before I saw you had said it. Here here!

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago
[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I was gonna say, 'have you ever lived with a cat?'

When they like you they show love the same way silver screen mafiosos threaten to kill you if you dont do what they want.

Cats are monsters. I wish i had one right now.

[–] finitebanjo@piefed.world 14 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Especially cats. Letting them outside causes mass death of insects and birds.

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Literally letting your cat outside is an ecological disaster in north America, because they just will not stop killing.

[–] dethedrus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Also a great way to kill your beloved family member.

Having to explain to your grandkids why mommy keeps leaving the door open and letting cats escape to their death never gets easier.

Thankfully long in the past, but not forgotten.

Well, at least she wasn't using her hands; that's much harder on a kid.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] finitebanjo@piefed.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's the first time I hear of cats endangering insects.
Hard for me to imagine them being efficient enough at hunting them or caring enough for them it would matter.

Couldn't find anything with a quick search either, do you have some source?

[–] finitebanjo@piefed.world 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

"A global synthesis and assessment of free-ranging domestic cat diet"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42766-6

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Of the individual species depredated or scavenged by cats, birds comprised 47.07% (981 species), followed by reptiles (463 species, 22.22%), mammals (431 species, 20.68%), insects (119 species, 5.71%), and amphibians (57 species, 2.74%; Fig. 2)

So you definitely wanna mention mammals and reptiles way before insects.

It's also regional, in Europe and North America insects don't really register. I assume the cause would be comparatively few larger insects.

This also only measures numbers of species, so does not directly mention individual counts nor factor in size of the animals. Biomass eaten would be a far better measurement here, and I would expect see insects placed far lower due to smaller body-sizes.

To me this doesn't seem like cats are a notable danger to insect life.

[–] finitebanjo@piefed.world -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm sorry that you don't consider insects a valuable part of the ecosystem and therefor worth mentioning. Idk where you got the idea they aren't a danger to insects when the study just told you they were.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago

I'm sorry that you don't consider insects a valuable part of the ecosystem

That is quite obviously not what I said.
It's pretty shitty to argue in bad faith like that.


The study tells nothing of danger, it tells of consumption. This might come as a shocker but in nature everything consumes something, often something alive. When talking about endangering, that means destroying the ecological balance, so by reducing a species numbers or even bringing it to extinction. It means an unsustainable load.

Roaming cats eat a lot of birds, enough to change the balance of the ecosystem.
The study now told us that cats eat comparatively a lot fewer insects in number. However smaller animals have vastly greater population numbers, a more constant value across species is biomass.

To simplify, if your insects are 1000x smaller that means you need to eat 1000x as many to cause the same damage.

I am calling the amount of insects consumed by roaming cats likely sustainable based on what the study presents. Cats don't hunt enough insects for it to matter to the entire ecosystem. Not (only) because they hunt fewer insects than rodents or birds apparently, but (much more) because they would need to hunt thousands of times more insects for a similar impact as they have on birds. Just due to the difference in population numbers stemming from the difference in size.

[–] shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago

Ah yes, cats. The prey animal that kills billions of animals every year.

Dogs and cats are. Puppies and kittens are technically predators but they don't really do much preying until they are grown.

[–] shplane@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Don’t take it so literal. It’s how these images are perceived by regular folk is what the post is getting at. Perception of what’s tough versus soft.