[HN Gopher] Feral pigeons and the London Pigeon String Foot and ...
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Feral pigeons and the London Pigeon String Foot and Rescue group
Author : nickwritesit
Score : 24 points
Date : 2024-06-22 10:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| junto wrote:
| I always had a negative view of pigeons as being "flying rats",
| but someone pointed this out to me that humans domesticated them,
| revered them, bred them, used them to deliver messages and then
| the telegram and telephone came along. These new communication
| tools made them superfluous to our needs so we abandoned them.
|
| Put in that context it's rather sad.
| timthorn wrote:
| Gordon Corera wrote a good book covering their use in WWII:
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37933332-secret-pigeon-s...
| ljf wrote:
| My (mildly interesting) pigeon story:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39689815
|
| I think they are amazing, and as you say they were once
| integral to our lives, now just a pest.
| richardw wrote:
| My wife and a few friends were into helping feral cats. I did a
| few stints. Built a shelter, helped bake cookies for sale to
| generate funds etc.
|
| I remember doing predator-prey models at uni. The issue is that
| the population will just grow until it's at some kind of
| capacity. Cats are easier to capture and spay, but an issue there
| is that for every cat that lives longer, many thousands of native
| animals are going to die. But the cat is cuter and visible, so we
| help it.
|
| For eg pigeons, what limits the population? You can't capture and
| neuter every bird, so population restriction is environmental. If
| you add food, rather than 1000 birds you now have 1100 birds,
| etc. Ideally we're being kind to a balanced population of birds
| that play some part in the local ecosystem, rather than one that
| we created and out-competes other birds because we give it a
| hand.
|
| Not an expert. Experts, what's the best outcome here?
|
| Edit: emigrated to Sydney. Took 3 moggies with us at great
| expense but they're now inside cats so we don't annihilate the
| local wildlife and irritate all the neighbours (who are
| rightfully very protective of their native animals). Cats are
| happy. A friend's mom looked after about 17 feral kittens. Now 17
| grown cats that eat a lot of food made of presumably gentle cows.
| This is not well-thought out. But kittens are cute and have
| utterly hacked humans.
| ajb wrote:
| While cats do indeed kill wildlife, I suspect that "thousands
| of animals per year" is a big exaggeration even for ferals. It
| might be true if their sole diet was wildlife, but in most
| cases the diet will include a lot of contributions from humans
| (from people who like cats, scavenging in bins, and
| occasionally, theft). And of course almost all of the wildlife
| they do take will be mice, which is the original reason we live
| with cats. Even today, if a cat near you is taking thousands of
| mice per year, few people would prefer to live with thousands
| of mice.
|
| Pet cats, of course, don't take anything like this number. I've
| seen figures of <5 per year, and that's consistent with my own
| cats.
| richardw wrote:
| If you're going to quote, make it an accurate quote :) I
| didn't say per year. And the amounts of animals killed by pet
| cats are very much not accepted as 5. Maybe you're presented
| with 5.
|
| "Cats have played a leading role in most of Australia's 34
| mammal extinctions since 1788, and are a big reason
| populations of at least 123 other threatened native species
| are dropping.
|
| But pet cats are wreaking havoc too. Our new analysis
| compiles the results of 66 different studies on pet cats to
| gauge the impact of Australia's pet cat population on
| Australia's wildlife.
|
| On average, each roaming pet cat kills 186 reptiles, birds
| and mammals per year, most of them native to Australia"
|
| https://www.nespthreatenedspecies.edu.au/news-and-
| media/late...
|
| "scientific evidence does not support the popular use of cats
| to control urban rat populations, and ecologists oppose their
| use for this purpose because of the disproportionate harm
| they do to native wildlife"
|
| "Surveys of cat owners find they often view the depredation
| of wildlife as a normal thing that cats do, and rarely feel
| an individual obligation to prevent it.[55] They may
| experience some level of cognitive dissonance toward the
| subject, because when surveyed they're more likely than the
| general public to believe that cat predation isn't harmful to
| wildlife"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife
| ktothe wrote:
| > For eg pigeons, what limits the population?
|
| Not an expert myself but here in Germany people build pigeon
| shelters and swap out the eggs with fake eggs.
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