"Taken together, these studies significantly alter our understanding of one of humanity's most familiar companions. Rather than silently trailing behind early farmers, slinking ever closer to human activity and community, cats likely moved into Europe in multiple waves post-domestication from North Africa, propelled by human cultural practices, trade networks, and religious reverence."
And of course being able to eliminate pest populations responsible for disease transmission, food spoilage, equipment/infrastructure damage, and other various harms has earned cats that seat in the pantheons of cultures around the globe.
"Food spoilage" is putting it mildly. Mice have short generations. A single mouse can have up to ten litters in one year. If unchecked, a mouse population will quickly turn all your stored food into mice.
In the meantime public sentiment toward cats in Australia is becoming really toxic (due to the consequences of a long-term ineffective feral control program). I swear one day when the chemical baits turn out to be worse than the cats themselves the pendulum will swing hard in favor of cats once again. They really are an indispensable tool and a big part of humanities agricultural success.
FWIW I'm in favor of dropping a few billion AUD into cat control programs and deploying technologies like felixer everywhere. Up until now it's just been an underfunded borderline volunteer affair.
Are cats actually effective at pest control or is that cat propaganda? How would cats operate in these societies?
I know they can catch pests but are they effective at controlling them? Maybe they will limit the growth of pests, so better than nothing. Most cats catch for fun rather than food I think
Maybe we had much more cats around for this purpose, if so I'd imagine there is some archeological proof.
> Most cats catch for fun rather than food I think
The hunting trigger is only loosely connected to hunger — they don't get hungry then go out to hunt, they'll often see a hunting opportunity and go for it, eating the result partially/totally/not as needed. In a situation with abundant prey this will look like they are mostly hunting for “sport”.
I assume this comes from hunt availability/success being intermittent: it is better to slightly over-hunt (and slightly overeat) to keep reserves up for a lax period that might be coming.
They say that a fed cat is a better mouser, and this might be why. A truly hungry cat will prowl less to conserve energy so have less opportunistic encounters with prey.
>Are cats actually effective at pest control or is that cat propaganda?
Yes. Have you never heard of a barn cat? Until recently pretty much ever commercial or industrial facility large enough to have its own maintenance department typically had one or more.
>How would cats operate in these societies?
Just like a barn cat. Leave out starvation rations for it and it'll hunt for the rest.
Catching for fun rather than food actually increases their mouse-hunting potential. With fun as a motivator, they can catch a lot more mice than they have the appetite to eat.
I mean, you don't need archeological evidence given that there's a vast amount of historical evidence of cats being kept for pest control as well as companionship. Even the Western world was largely agrarian just a hundred years ago! And farm cats are still a common thing. Free-roaming cats are also a massive threat to bird populations in many places – cats are just very effective predators and birds reproduce much slower than mice and voles.
I believe the royal society for the protection of birds studied whether cats are a threat to bird populations and concluded that they really aren't. Obviously cats do kill birds, but overwhelmingly the major threat to birds is habitat loss caused by humans. Also, cats kill rodents, which indirectly helps birds because rodents are a big threat to bird populations, because rats take eggs from their nests. In fact, cats preferentially kill rodents. Something like 90% of their diet will typically be rodents. Birds, for them, are only opportunity kills. In other words, cats are an easy scapegoat because they quite visibly do kill birds, but humans (as is usually the case) are the true underlying problem.
It really depends on the region. Island populations are disproportionately at higher risk to eradication by cat due to the difficulty or impossibility in replenishing the population from outside/neighboring populations.
Wolverines have soft tummies too. That we see cats as cute is not so much that they have evolved to be cute. They look little different than wild cats. We see the palus cat as cute but pet its tummy and you will lose some organs. Those humans who protected and nutured cats were better survivors. Having cats around gave them an advantage over people who were indiferent to cats. We finding them cute is a trait that has evolved in us.
wolverines are also fuzzy and adorable. knowing full well how much it might fuck my shit up, i don't think i could stop myself reaching to pet it if i ever crossed paths with one.
Cat people never seem to have a need to boost their egos and take jabs at dog people in discussions about dogs. Only (a certain type of) dog people seem to do so. Insecurity? Superiority complex?
Maybe toxoplasmosis makes you a better person? It is my experience that cat owners are overwhelmingly nice, empathetic human beings. There does not seem to be such correlation among dog owners.
> Toxoplasmosis is a common infection that you can catch from the poo of infected cats, or infected meat. It's usually harmless but can cause serious problems in some people
The UK governments approach to using normal, simple language across all its web assets is fantastic.
I feel that medical language in the UK is dumbed down for your average (and let me reiterate again, average) person
Which is good for the majority but slightly unnerving if you don't like being talked down or wants to know what is really happening and have anything above very basic medical knowledge
Llama said its in CM. Gemini said "aiming for Crystal Mark". OpenAI called its output "plain, clear" without mentioning CM. Claude didnt comment its output. Deepseek returned "Here is your passage rewritten in clear, polished English with a refined and elegant tone—what you might call "Crystal Mark English"".
Being treated like a god will get you everywhere.