From The Detroit Free Press comes this little gem about feral cats in the city of Detroit:
By one calculation cited by the Petsmart Charities, there are approximately 657,000 homeless cats in the area. The Humane Society of the United States estimates the nation's free-roaming cat population at 50 million, while another study published by Best Friends Animal Society estimates 87 million feral cats nationwide -- 22 cats for every square mile of land and water in the U.S.
Of course the "data" is complete nonsense. I have no idea how many feral cats are in Detroit or in America (lots!), but I can assure you that feral cats are fairly rare in most of American because most of America is in deep woods or near-desert far from humans where you will never find a feral cat.
In fact, feral cats are like cockroaches and brown rats -- they simply do not exist absent the presence of man, and most depend on humans to supply at least some of their food resources. Yes, you may find a feral cat as far as a mile or two from a farm house, but without that farm, house that cat would simply disappear. "Feral Cats of the Yellowstone" is a blank book, as is "Feral Cats of the Boundary Waters" and "Feral Cats of Western Kansas." Feral cats are not wildlife any more than a brown rat or a cockroach is wildlife. They are man-made pests, pure and simple.
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2 comments:
Feral cats are also a lot like urban raccoons and pigeons as well. They live near us because we reliably produce food for them! and we have urban foxes and coyotes for the same reason -- they eat cats, small stray dogs, young raccoons, squirrels, rats and pigeons.
I saw a study last winter by some volunteer high school teachers and students with camera "traps" showing that there are more animals in urban forests than rural ones.
The studies that say dogs domesticated themselves by eating garbage and staying on to bond with humans seem pretty convincing -- never mind the location, the process seems plausible. Our garbages drives the urban ecosystem. Bears and wolves are not too far behind either!
Here is the article on urban forests from an NYTimes blog:
http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/camera-traps/
Once I read this it seemed obvious that any food chain with animals that eat human garbage will produce a vibrant ecosystem close to the garbage!
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