4 iconic wild cat species' numbers slashed over past 50 years (Infographic)

Most of us who read about the wild cat species and conservation understand that there has been a dramatic drop in numbers across the board. Here is an infographic showing the drop in population numbers of the lion, tiger, cheetah and leopard over the past 50 years with some additional information.

The the most important thing to note is (1) even the best experts sometimes don't know population numbers of wild cat species and when they do know (an estimate) the data is about 10 years old. Conservation is in a pretty poor state in my view and (2) there are some wonderful individual conservationists and groups concerned with conservation but the leaders of countries and the politicians are not truly committed to wildlife conservation and in this instance the conservation of the wild cat species.

That is why there's been a consistent decline over the past 50 years. The decline has been dramatic and shocking. It will continue for most of the species until the only individuals remaining on the planet will be those behind bars in zoos. Shame for the generations of kids to be born in the future.

The future of the wild cats from the smallest namely the rusty-spotted cat to the largest namely the Siberian tiger is pretty dire actually. I am very pessimistic but I could be wrong. I just don't see a great future for these species including the great iconic species.

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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.

Warning to UK residents: scams demanding upfront fees have soared by 550%

NEWS AND VIEWS: This is a warning to UK residents and I would like to point out that a lot of people buy cats online nowadays from social media for example and not infrequently these sellers ask for money upfront perhaps in a deposit. Then the buyer never hears from the seller again. That is the kind of scam that this article refers to. But it covers a whole host of different products and commercial transactions.

Upfront fee scams increase in the UK. Image: MikeB

The Times reports that, "Scams that ask people to pay an upfront fee for fake goods or services have soared sixfold since Covid-19 but overall fraud has fallen back to pre-pandemic levels".

The Office for National Statistics said that there were 391,000 advance fee fraud offences committed in the 12 months to March 2023 which is the equivalent of 1071 every day or 44 per hour!

This was a 541% increase on the 60,000 advance fee fraud offences committed in the same period running up to March 2020. This is the time when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were first introduced.

Advanced fraud fee scammers seek to entice eager buyers to send money online in advance of receiving the goods or services. The basic advice is to NEVER PAY MONEY UPFRONT. Unless you absolutely no for sure that the person you are sending the money to is reliable and honest. That's unlikely to be the case. Personally, I would never give anybody money upfront for goods or services.

If anybody asks you for money upfront particular on social media you immediately presume that they are scammers. That might sound a little aggressive and cynical but it is good advice.

As mentioned, there have been numerous scams of this nature concerning the purchase of kittens online. Sometimes the scam is compounded by the seller purporting to sell a purebred cat such as the popular Maine Coon. You send the money to reserve a kitten and at that point the seller disappears. They never communicate again and you never see your kitten.

Never buy a purebred cat online without seeing the kitten first at the seller's property. Just don't do it in my view. Unless, once again, you can verify that the seller is bone fide and therefore honest and genuine.

The world is becoming more dangerous. There are more scammers around these days. Particularly in the UK. Scammers think that the UK is "treasure island". It is because there are too many silly people falling for these scams. We all have to be super-vigilant all the time. And we are alone because the police do nothing about online fraud. They are totally out of their depth.

Gen Z pet owners (ages 18 to 25) are far more likely than other age groups to have a variety of pets

Forbes Advisor has produced some interesting statistics about pet ownership in the United States of America. Perhaps the leading statistic from this research is in the headline. Generation Z as they are called are far more likely than other generations to have a pet with, for example, 86% having a dog and 81% having a cat. 

It doesn't stop there because 46% have a bird and 30% keep a hamster or guinea pig. By contrast, baby boomers, those born after the Second World War, are the least likely to have a pet; 50% have a dog and 42% have a cat. Only 6% have a hamster or guinea pig by comparison.

Image: MikeB - Gen Z pet owners (ages 18 to 25) are far more likely than other age groups to have a variety of pets.

Big increase in pet owners

So, there's been a massive increase in the number of pet owners in America and the same applies to the UK by the way. And this increase is mainly coming from Generation Z, the country's young people. 

Covid

They are turning to pets and I wonder whether Covid-19 had a major role to play in this. You know those two years when people were stuck at home getting bored and feeling isolated? Well, that's certainly brought about a surge in adoptions simply for companionship.

And they felt that because they were at home working, they had the time to give to a newly adopted companion animal. Perhaps, though, the problem was that they weren't fully prepared. Sometimes they adopted in a self-indulgent way.

These thoughts are, I notice, supported by the Forbes survey when they state that "78% of pet owners surveyed by Forbes Advisor acquired pets during the pandemic".

1988

Forbes say that you would find a pet in the USA in 1988 in 56% of homes. In 2023 the percentage has climbed to 66%.

More dogs than cats

I have read many articles in which the general tenor is that there is an equal number of cats and dogs in the US but these statistics undermine that statement. As at 2023, dogs are the most popular pets in the US with 65.1 million US households owning a dog followed by cats at 46.5 million and freshwater fish at 11.1 million. 

That means the number of dog owning households is 1.4 times the number of cat owning households in America. That's a big difference. Although by itself it doesn't say that there are more dogs than cats in the US.

Although, I just noticed that in this case it does mean just that. They estimated that there are 65.1 million dogs in the US as at 2023 in comparison to 46.5 million domestic cats. In comparison, there are 2.2 million horses kept I presume as pets or companion animals in the US as at this date. 

Lower than I am used to seeing

Note: these figures seem lower than what I read in the past. I've seen figures as high as 80 million domestic cats in the US but clearly these were estimates. And also, on a separate topic, there are many estimates about the number of feral cats in the US and the numbers vary wildly indicating that the experts simply don't know.

Cost

On the issue of costs, typically dog owners spend $339 on food for their dog and $367 on veterinary care, $79 on toys, $99 on grooming and $28 on "other" making a grand total of $912 per year on a dog in the US.

As for cats, a cat owner spends $310 on food annually, $253 on veterinary care, $50 on toys, $18 on grooming, and $22 on other making a grand total of $653 annually on a cat. Note, I have used the singular "cat" or "dog" in those statements. I have made a presumption because Forbes does not tell me whether those are the costs for cats, plural, or dogs, plural. I will presume it must be for one cat or one dog.

Overall, in 2022, Americans spent $136.8 billion on their pets which is up 10.68% from the previous year.

Adoption - buying

Perhaps rather sadly, 42% of dog owners acquired their pet from a store which is considered not the ideal route to acquire a pet because when you buy one from a store sometimes you don't know how good the dog is in terms of health and their pedigree. The same of course applies to any animal bought at a pet shop. 

In contrast, 43% of cat owners got their pets from a store. 40% of cat owners acquired their cat from a shelter while 30% of dog owners did the same thing.

Home owners

As expected, people who own their homes are more likely to have a companion animal compared to those who rent.

Better off

Also, the better-off households are more likely to own a companion animal. 63% of households with an annual income of a hundred thousand dollars lived with a dog while 40% lived with a cat. You can see the bias towards dogs here and I would suspect that households with higher incomes are more likely to adopt or purchase a dog than a cat. 

My argument is that higher income families are more alpha in their behaviour and more alpha males, for example, are more likely to prefer dogs to cats. That may be a crude argument but I think it is plausible.

Breeders

7% of cat owners bought their cat from a breeder. In comparison, 23% of dog owners bought their dog from a breeder. This probably reflects the fact that there are far more purebred dogs than purebred cats for the simple reason that domestic dogs have been around far longer than domestic cats. There are more dog breeds than there are cat breeds. Far more in fact as I recall. So, it is far more normal to buy a purebred dog than a purebred cat.

One cat or dog

65% of dog owning households owned just one dog in 2020 compared to 60% in 2016 and 56% of cat owning households owned just one cat in 2020 compared to 53% in 2016.

The best cities for pet owners in the USA

In the following order, the best cities for pet owners in the USA, led by Tucson, Arizona with a score of 100 are: Raleigh, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Wichita, Kansas; Cincinnati, Ohio; Plano, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; Glendale, Arizona.

Tucson had a dog vet cost score of 90, a cat vet score of 89.89, a vet access score of 92.67, a pet friendly spaces score at 78.02. Glendale had a dog vet cost score of 72.22, a cat vet cost score of 71.91, a vet access score of 96.00, a pet friendly spaces score of 80.70 and an overall score of 88.99. Glendale was in 10th place but still of course in the top 10 best cities for pet owners in the USA.

All the world's pet dogs weigh 10 times all the world's pet cats

Interested? Perhaps not but I think the statistic in the title is mildly interesting. Perhaps the more interesting statistic is that the weight of all humans on the planet at present is 18 times more than the weight of all land based wild mammals. 

But ants weigh about four times more than wild mammals! Those pesky ants are almost weightless as individuals but there are an awful lot of them.

Infographic my MikeB.

Perhaps the more extraordinary statistic from a study (The global biomass of wild mammals) by Prof Ron Milo and colleagues of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel is that the total biomass in tonnage of humans is almost 18 times more than all the wild mammals on the planet combined. 

To that perhaps remarkable statistic we have to add the 630 million tonnes of livestock kept by humans and other mammals that would not exist without us such as urban rats.

As the Infographic shows you, the biomass of all land-based wild mammals is about 22 million tonnes.

Stop Drinking Starbucks Frappuccino and Save a Cat

You won't though will you? I guess Starbucks is pretty addictive. Apparently it cost $124.56 USD per year in America if you drink two Frappuccino's per month. On average it costs about the same to spay/neuter, vaccinate and feed a shelter cat per year. Just think of the effect it would have on shelter cats in America. Sure, Starbucks would moan! But who cares...

Only 15% of Americans adopt shelter animals. I guess that is why 4 million out of a total population of 7 million shelter animals are euthanised yearly. If every American adopted a companion animal from a shelter they would save collectively about $2.4 billion and countless cat and dog lives. Maybe there should be a law for one year that everyone has to adopt from a shelter! Go on, think out of the box.

There are 8,800 American breeders of companion animals. There are 70 people inspecting the breeders. I think the cat and dog associations should self regulate and inspect their members. They should know best and it would improve the image of the associations and breeding in general.

How many cats did Mark Twain keep? Not sure but I read 11. Would that make him a hoarder? No, and he loved, respected and appreciated the domestic cat. He made some very quotable sayings about cats.

Americans spend about $50 billion annually on their pets. That is more that on video games, digital music and movies combined. Americans love their companion animals. But more needs to be done to help the animals that are on the fringes or cast out of this enormous financial market.

Source for data: Frugaldad.com. Associated: Pet Care Costs.