Allegedly feral cats killed 145 young Cuban crocodiles at a breeding farm

The Cuban crocodile is an endangered species particular to that country with particular characteristics such as having the ability to leap high out of water and be curious and aggressive by temperament. Because they are endangered the Cuban authorities have been breeding them to restock the swamps. 

Every year, the Zapata Swamp Crocodile Breeding Farm, the world's largest Cuban crocodile breeding operation, releases some 500 Cuban crocs into the swamp, in the hope that they'll flourish and reproduce according to Etiam Pérez-Fleitas, a biologist who's affiliated with the farm.

And then suddenly, during October and November 2022, Mr Pérez-Fleitas said that there were a series of predator attacks resulting in the death of 145 four-month-old crocodiles. They believe that feral cats killed and ate the crocodiles based upon the evidence but there's no certainty that this has happened.

The clues that they have relied upon include:

• "Suspicious markings and fur recovered in the vicinity"
• Camera traps which recorded at least one feral cat entering the breeding farm's pens.
• And on one occasion "farm staff witnessed several cats feeding on something nearby".
• The staff members found "fragments of crocodiles".
• The attacks on the crocodiles stopped a month after seven feral cats were captured.
• And lastly, there is no evidence that other predators have been involved.

That said, they don't believe that feral cats are a major problem i.e. an "existential threat to the Cuban crocodile".

That's because these attacks occurred in a breeding farm, an unnatural environment. Feral cats would struggle to attack the Cuban crocodile in the wild where they are much more dispersed.

That said, it is another story which effectively attacks the feral cat. The feral cat is receiving a huge amount of negative press nowadays with increasing pressure on the authorities to do something about the large numbers of feral cats in many countries. 

Of course the problem is a human created one. What the authorities should be doing is educating people to take better care of their cats, to spay and neuter them, to perhaps keep them indoors full-time and provide an excellent environment indoors. They should do things to prevent predation as is happening right now in Australia.

The authorities should not be reactionary by which I mean going around trapping and killing feral cats. That doesn't cure the problem. What cures the problem is stopping procreation and preventing the existence of feral cats. Feral cats ultimately come from domestic cats and domestic cats that are carelessly owned can end up becoming stray cats and stray cats become feral cats. Deal with human behaviour to cure the problem.

And lastly, I think without being too harsh on people, we can put this alleged feral cat attack down, once again, to human carelessness. Why weren't the pens constructed in a way which prevented feral cats getting in? This breeding farm is not protecting young crocodiles well enough. I hope the authorities are looking at that as well.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Daddy long legs are not poisonous to cats or dogs

In case you were wondering! Daddy long legs are not poisonous to cats and dogs. As they are insects a cat might be interested in nibbling one. No harm will be done. Domestic cats naturally eat insects or they might nibble on one.

Daddy long legs. Image by Strudders from Pixabay 

I can't bring myself to say anymore because there is no more to say. There is one page on the internet (wildlifeinformer.com) which takes about 2,000 words to say what can said in around 50. I have dragged it out by they take the prize in waffle and padding.

The only added point worth making is that in some countries such as the USA there are poisonous spiders which can do genuine harm to the ever-inquisitive domestic cat. I have a several pages on that. Here is one: Can cats get bitten by brown recluse spiders?

I also have a page on: 230 cat poisons (list). And finally: Insects and Snakes Poisonous to Cats (USA).

Eight-gram bat flies 1200 miles only to be killed by a cat

A tiny, eight-gram bat, a female Nathusius' pipistrelle, flew from London to the village of Molgino in Russia's Pskov region on July 30. A journey of 1,200 miles. Sadly, the cat was found by a village resident after being injured by a cat. The bat was taken to a rescue organisation but failed to recover and died from the attack. It's a sad ending and it is not a good look for the domestic cat. It is the kind of opportunity which is seized upon by ornithologists and conservationists of native species to criticise the domestic cat and to argue the case for keeping them indoors full-time.

 Nathusius' pipistrelle. Photo: BBC.

The bat had been ringed by a bat recorder, Brian Briggs, in 2016 at Bedfont Lakes Country Park near Heathrow airport in west London.

It was a great surprise to see that the bat had ended up 1,200 miles away. The Russians reported the finding to the UK's Bat Conservation Trust. Briggs said that the news was very exciting. He said: "It's great to be able to contribute to the international conservation work to protect these extraordinary animals."

It is the only record of this species of bat travelling this kind of distance from west to east. Most records concern males flying south-west from Latvia. The only other similar journey by this species of minuscule bat was in 2019 when one migrated from Latvia to Spain after a 1382-mile flight.

Experts say that the reason for the long flight is climate change and they expect more of the same in the future.

P.S. The bat is not a typical prey animal for the domestic cat. I suspect that the cat reacted to the bat's movement and attacked it. They decided it was inedible or even had no intention of feeding in any case. It was an instinctive response to the movements of a small animal.

Mouse eye view of being chased by a cat

TikTok video screenshot.

This is what it looks like from mouse to be chased by a cat down your burrow 😏

@jackthecat1

Jackie😹🙀##cats

♬ original sound - Jack

Cruel Way To Kill Birds By U.S. Department of Agriculture

Who said cats are big killers of wild bird species? The ornithologists and Woody ;) LOL. People who know better realise that people are the biggest killers by far either by direct of indirect means.

The method employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston, Texas, USA is particular nasty and quite shocking to some people.



Rather than take humane proactive measures (deterrents) the authorities have put down a poison, Avitrol®, mixed with corn kernels. This has resulted in birds species such as grackles and pigeons writhing in their death throes for upwards of an hour having fallen from the sky. Some of this was filmed. Avitrol is a particularly nasty poison as it causes the birds to writhe and convulse which is intended as it frightens the living birds to stay away. Charming human behavior, isn't it? At least cats kill birds to eat. But let's remember birds are down the list of prey for the cat.

Of course passenger safety at airports is of paramount concern and bird strikes can, very rarely, bring an aircraft down. However, as mentioned, one wonders whether there are better more humane ways. The most humane methods should be used.

The Wildlife Services department of the USDA kills 3-5 million birds annually we are told. My personal view is that the USDA and perhaps all government departments are unsympathetic to wildlife if it gets in the way of commerce and "growth" meaning economic growth. And as there always has to be ecomonic growth, the only model capitalism understands, there is likely to be more birds killed in the future.

Source story.

The Passenger Pigeon: A message to domestic cat critics

In the 19th century the raucous passenger pigeon was the world's most common bird. It swarmed in hundreds of millions over the eastern half of North America journeying from one forest to another in search of nuts, its main source of food.

One colony was 20 miles long and 5 miles wide. Other reports talk of columns of birds up to 3 miles wide; the birds tightly packed flying overhead for hour after hour.  The ornithologist, John James Audubon, recounted in 1810 walking in Kentucky with a never-ending stream of passenger pigeons flying past him for 3 successive days.  A modern estimate puts the colony of birds that he saw at 1,100,000,000 (1.1 billion) birds.  Other flocks of passenger pigeons may have numbered 2 to 3 billion.  The entire population at peak was estimated at about 10,000,000,000.

In the 1880s there was still mass nestings of the passenger pigeon. Yet two decades later this most common birds was extinct. The last of the species was a captive female called Martha who died sometime between midday and 1 pm on September 1, 1914 in Cincinnati zoo.

Mark Avery, the author of a fascinating book entitled: A Message from Martha -The Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and its Relevance Today, has decided that the reason for this bird's rapid decline to extinction was a combination of industrial slaughter through sport hunting combined with another well-known form of human activity namely “progress", which in this instance refers to the rapid spread West in the 19th century of American colonists who cut down forests with such gusto that by 1872 some 52% of trees in eastern America had gone. These trees were mostly mature ones that provided the bird's main source of food. In modern parlance this is "loss of habitat". Both hunting in the form of poaching and habitat loss are very relevant today with respect to human threats to the wild cat species.

What has this got to do with cats?  Frequently on this website and on the Internet generally, we see criticism from people who dislike the domestic, stray and feral cat. They constantly state that bird populations are in decline because of predation by the cat.

In defence of the cat, I always state that human behaviour is far more dangerous to bird populations and has had a far greater impact upon their population sizes. The story of the passenger pigeon in North America illustrates my argument and I hope that it drives home the point that ornithologists and cat haters should please reconsider what they wish to say when they criticise the domestic cat.

Prey of Domestic Cats (average frequency of mammals, birds, reptiles)

Average frequency of occurrence of mammals, birds and reptiles in the diet of the domestic cat based on gut or scat (feces) analysis in relation to cats in the northern hemisphere, meaning Europe and N.America combined, and on islands with and without seabirds.

Here is a spreadsheet with the data:



This is important information because there is often a lot of discussion about the domestic cat preying on wildlife. These figures are based on a large number of studies.

"What is observed locally is not necessarily representative on a wider scale"

"estimates of total predation....are meaningless from an ecological point of view unless put into relation to the entire population of that prey species and its annual production rate"

"Careful studies are still needed before 'condemning' all cats to an indoor life, or even forbidding them as pets."

(quotes from the book referred to as the source for the figures).

Martha's Vineyard: Piping Plovers Are More Important Than the Cat

At Martha's Vineyard the free roaming domestic and stray cat appears to have less value than the threatened piping plover. The piping plover is a sparrow-sized shorebird.

Last season there was concern about the plover's mortality rate and the assessment was that the feral or domestic cat was responsible for three deaths.

Piping plover preyed on by cats in Martha's Vineyard. Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region.

That is pretty much all you need to know.  This is a straight competition between the value of a bird in the value of a cat.  It appears that humankind wishes to intervene into what goes on in nature naturally.  Perhaps the underlying motivation for this is because the domestic cat is non-native to America whereas the plover is a native species as far as I am aware.

So people are trapping these cats.  They do the best they can with them to re-home and return them to their owners but I suspect that if this goes on for long at least some of them will end up at shelters and at least some of those cats will end up being euthanised for no good reason other than they were taken to the shelter by people who wanted to protect species of bird.

I see the dilemma.  It would seem that the answer as to what to do is based upon the value of each species as I said and the value of each species is dictated by factors such as whether the species is non-native or native to a country and whether the population is large or small.  The decision also depends on whether the population is growing or declining.  On all those criteria the bird comes out as more vulnerable and therefore people decided to protect it and where necessary sacrifice the more abundant and more able domestic, stray and feral cat.

Andean Mountain Cat Attacks Mountain Vizcacha

The title is a bit overdramatised but nonetheless you will see a mountain vizcacha in the mouth of an Andean mountain cat in this rather poor video which appears to have been copied (it may disappear as a result!).

The mountain vizcacha is a bit like a rabbit. It is almost the only prey this cat feeds on as I recall.

Read more on this website or on this page.

Feral Cats Are Part of the Ecosystem

Yes, we need to remind ourselves that feral cats are part of the ecosystem. They are integrated into the wildlife. They prey on certain wildlife and certain wildlife preys on them and if that is disturbed there may be unforeseen consequences down the food chain. The feral cat primarily feeds on rodents such as mice and rats. It is a myth that feral cats prey on birds in large numbers. Some people want to get rid of the feral cat completely. I don't think they have thought through the consequences of that objective. What would happen to the rat population?

Some people like to shoot feral cats and these people would like to see all feral cats eradicated. But we know that as feral cats are part of the ecosystem and they prey on rats they cannot be eradicated without massive unforeseen and possibly disastrous consequences. In which case they should not shoot feral cats at all because they shoot them with intention of the long-term objective of eradicating them which, as I just stated, is impossible and unwise.

An example of the unwise nature of trying to eradicate an animal that is considered a pest or a nuisance is the long-term attempt to eradicate the dingo in Australia. If Australians do not wish to eradicate the dingo then they at least they wish to hunt it in large numbers to reduce the population size.

The 70 year hunt of the dingo in Australia going forward will damage native wildlife species and in some cases endangered species. This is the conclusion of a study by the New South Wales University published in The Proceedings of the Royal Society.

The dingo preys on animals such as kangaroos, foxes and possums and these animals prey on other animals such as native rodents. If you kill the dingo there are more animals that can prey on rodents therefore the rodent population falls. However there are other animals such as bandicoots that are preyed upon by these animals. As can be seen in trying to exterminate the dingo there is a knock-on effect which can lead unforeseen and detrimental consequences.

The feral cat preys on rodents as mentioned. If you exterminate the feral cat in Australia, logically that should lead to a sharp increase in the population numbers of bush and swamp rats. Rats can kill native wild life.

Another interesting aspect of the attempt to exterminate animals that are perceived as pests is that you end up with conflicting consequences. Exterminating the dingo results of a fall in the rat population, it seems, while exterminating the feral cat results in a rise in the population numbers of rats. If the authorities wish to exterminate both feral cats and dingos in Australia the consequences will conflict and surely that indicates that there has been a lack of foresight as to the consequences.

In my opinion, it is foolhardy to mess with an ecosystem. If Australians wish to conserve native wildlife than they could achieve much more and in a far more humane manner if they analysed more accurately the impact that they, themselves have on native wildlife species including habitat destruction and take steps to remedy that.

The human is the greatest danger to native wild species in Australia or anywhere else. People should stop passing the buck to animals. It only delays what has to be done. The modern human has a habit of evading responsibility for his actions.

Why does my cat bring in live mice?

Why does my cat bring in live mice? This behaviour mimics the behaviour of a wild cat mother who brings her prey back to the den for her cubs to interact with, perhaps kill, perhaps play with but in any event the prey is brought back to the den to introduce the cubs to the hunting process.

It is part of the training process. Perhaps sometime in the near future after this event the mother will take her cubs out of the den on a hunting trip and that would be the next stage in her training of her cubs to hunt prey. Some people say that a domestic cat sees a human companion as one of her kittens when they bring home prey. I don't think this is the case. Domestic cats see us as other domestic cats albeit much larger.

It is not always the case that the mother leaves the prey for her cubs to play with and kill. Perhaps she will kill the prey herself and this sometimes happens with domestic cats when they bring mice and other prey home. They may kill and eat a mouse once brought back to the home.

Also, it is not always the case that a cat brings home live mice. A cat that is preying on wildlife outside in the garden or in the vicinity may well kill the prey where it has been attacked. Indeed the cat may eat or partially prey at the site of the attack.

Food Selection in Domestic Cats

There is no question that cats have food preferences. Some cats are finickity eaters. For me, one of the most important factors in feeding cats is variety. Cats do become bored with their food if they are fed the same food day in and day out. They will eat it if hungry enough but you will see signs of boredom with a certain food if it is provided monotonously.

It may be a food that he liked but now seems to dislike. A change to something else for a while will rejuvenate his interest in the food that he became bored with. The different food may even be a food that in the past he did not show a great interest in, yet all of sudden he likes it. There is a counter argument though that says that we should not try too hard, too often, to please our cat as it can lead to cat obesity, a modern cat health problem. It is about good cat caretaking ultimately.

There is the perennial question of whether cats will eat dog food or food that is missing vital nutrients. Apparently cats cannot tell through taste if a food presented to them is deficient in nutrients or if it is not a balanced food. However, if a deficient food is provided for a long time a cat will eat less of it or refuse it because he will learn that the taste of the food is connected to the illness that he suffers as a consequence of eating it. This is not an accurate assessment by a cat, obviously, as feeling unwell may be due to a reason unconnected with the food eaten.

We are told that the palatability of food is decided on taste primarily. However, in my experience, the domestic cat will smell food as a initial check on palatability and perhaps to see if it is a type that he has liked before. Cats don't seem to be able to check visually at close range. It is down to smell then taste.

It seems that today, in the modern world (2012), cats can fail to self regulate intake resulting in obesity. This may be due to overfeeding treats. If treats of human cooked food are more palatable than commercially available cat food what does that tell us about the palatability of cat food or the drift to human preferences by the domestic cat? My cat prefers human cooked food, most times not always.

A cat's taste buds are located on the tongue - upper surface and back of tongue - and on the palate. A cat's taste buds can detect the freshness of food. This is based on taste bud receptors that can detect certain chemicals in the tissues of dead animals. It seems that the quantity and therefore strength of taste of these chemicals informs the cat as to how fresh the food is e.g. how long the prey has been dead. Cats don't like carrion (carcasses of dead animals).

Cat's can detect amino acids that contain sulphur. Taurine is in this category and an essential ingredient for a cat. Accordingly, cats are able to gauge palatability based on the taurine content of food (taurine deficiency in cats and taurine for Bengal cats).

Cats don't like sweet foods. Although there is a lot of sugar in dry cat food. It is a hidden ingredient.

As to feral cats, they prefer voles, young rabbits and hares over mice and rats. Mice and are caught not always eaten. Shrews are rarely eaten after being caught. This is put down to the diet of the shew: insects.

Small wild cats make several kills in a 24 hour day. Some travel miles at night in search of food. It is very challenging. The mode of feeding of wild cats and feral cats - small prey, frequent feeding - dictates how we feed our domestic cat. You'll notice that cats eat less and more frequently than humans. This is hard wired from the wild cat ancestor, the African wildcat.

Geriatric cats lose their sense of taste and smell so need a high palatability cat food if they have a weight loss problem. Old cats do lose weight.

Associated: Feeding feral cats.

Why do cats like milk?

The fat in milk is what cats like. Whole milk contains 3.5% butterfat (fatty part of milk) content. Cats like cream as well and medium cream contains 25% butterfat. Fats are part of a cat's diet. They provide energy. The average man has up to 24% fat in his body. Men are mammals. Mice are mammals. I can't find a figure for the percentage of fat in mice but it would be similar to humans, I would have thought. So mice, the primary prey of the domestic cat, has lots of fat in it. Cats like fat and like milk because of that.

Also milk is the kitten's food source immediately after birth. There must be a connection there because we keep adult cats in a state of kitten-hood due to the fact that we provide for them in every aspect of their nutrition. A cat is drinking mother's milk even when she is 15 years of age!

I realise that mother's milk (colostrum) is not supermarket milk but there are great similarities. The problem is that most cats are lactose intolerant (due to insufficient lactase) because the milk at supermarkets is cow's milk. We, too, can be lactose intolerant. Have you tried drinking lactose free milk or soya milk to see if it improves your health? We are not cows.....