So I guess I’ll pander to my audience and throw up one cat video. Click bait!
Trigger warning: Dead cat. Live raptors.
If you’re one of those people who really likes cats, you should take this as a reminder to keep your pet indoors.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
My family are all country folk, and pet-nabbings are just kinda “that’s how it is” for them. To them pets are outdoor things, sometimes they get eaten, and that’s just the circle of life. Personally I find putting up with odors and the occasional hairball is a small price to pay to know I won’t come home to find my little girls became raptor snacks.
It’s a food chain out there. There is a family of eagles near my in-laws farm, and they do a good job at keeping the population of groundhogs low, as well as cats. Used to be a LOT of cats in the barn before the eagles moved in.
Balance restored!
(Sorry, PZ!)
It’s a cat, not a person. The only real difference between a cat and the eagle is that someone might have personal feelings for it.
Marcoli, that is horrible.
It is a shame that someone’s pet got eaten, but that’s not exactly the usual outcome with outside cats. Usually, it’s the birds that don’t fare so well. Frankly, anyone who’s letting their cat roam is creating an automatic problem by introducing an invasive (and highly efficient) predator into the surrounding environment. They kill all kinds of wildlife, especially songbirds, small mammals, and small reptiles/amphibians. So this video is just one more reminder to cat owners (and I am one) to keep your little domesticated predator at home.
That’s a pretty fascinating film. Someone told me that owls kill cats, which I considered unlikely due to weight differences, but I checked into it by asking a wildlife biologist who studied such things. She told me that some owls specialize in killing cats, and that they’ve found owl nesting sites that contained dozens of cat collars. The owl can’t lift the cat and fly off with it, instead, once they’ve killed it, they cut the cat into smaller pieces and fly off with those.
So, even though we live in the country on a farm, the cat is in the house 24/7. Meanwhile I watch a seemingly never-ending parade of cats and dogs die outside my windows… Some people take their unwanted pets out to the country and dump them off, mistakenly believing they will live a wonderful life out here in the country. Nope. They live short, miserable lives and usually have to endure an agonizing and slow death. Please never dump animals out in the country. You’re just feeding the coyotes and other predators.
The cat was almost certainly scavenged by the eagle. Their diet is basically fish & carrion. It was probably roadkill.
re 7:
yes, abandoning pets onto farms, is frequent. people think that farms can be a safe, assured living place for random pets. We adopted one abandoned cat from my FIL’s farm. Tommy was not fairing well there, so we took pity and adopted him. We brought him out to CA with us, and when we [exclusive] came back, we left him with a friend who welcomed him most graciously, where he still thrives even given his age.
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yeah cats are awful, exploiting us by momentarily pausing their predatory nature when convenient. It is understandable how birders hate felines with a passion. tsk tsk tsk.
My cat is exclusively indoors. I don’t want her hunting, I don’t want her scavenging whatever garbage she finds in the neighborhood, and I don’t want her going anywhere near the busy highway that’s just a couple blocks from my apartment.
She does not appear to have a problem with this arrangement, as she still has a fairly spacious apartment to run around in and lots of toys to help satisfy her hunting instincts.
Ecological karma?
We have coyotes in our San Francisco neighborhood who are believed to kill cats and small dogs. The significant other worries about our semi-ferrel 14 year old cat but we can’t change her life at this point.
Ah, so that’s what happened. Some time ago, the mildly deranged penguin was launching cats out of the trebuchet. One of the customary yowls-into-the-far-distance abruptly ended, not with the usual FOOMPH! or SPLASH!, often followed by a long pig cursing (once it was a witch trying to cast an actual curse, but misspoke “penguin” as “pigeon” — and nothing new happened, causing considerable speculation about what was supposed to have happened). This yowl ended with a distinct gulp and then a very loud BURP! The cat didn’t come back for its next flying lesson, and none of the local restaurant owners complained — well, not more than usual — so the mildly deranged penguin conclude the cat, when landing, had eaten a walrus, and then was sleeping it off.
I wish. Too many cat owners are obnoxious asses about keeping their cats on their property. Some people recently moved out of town and left a houseful of fucking cats. Now I have to trap a bunch of cats who have decided our birds make good eating.
Conclusion of comments section: People are the assholes, not the pets. Be they birds, cats, dogs, walruses, octopuses, etc. Except clams of course. Clams are dumb as hell.
Had it been a puppy, that vid would have been deeply disturbing.
Only an anti-feline person like yourself would post such a video. Thou art truly evil.
I once saw a larger raptor eating a smaller raptor.
In passing, through the car window.
We didn’t stop to take pix.
anbheal @16 – Last year on a live safari drive in South Africa that I watch, a young leopard had a dog in a tree. Dead prey, dangling from a big branch up in a marula tree. You could see the leg and dog foot hanging down. Problem was, the dog turned out to be rabid, and after they caught the leopard, he tested positive for rabies. That was so sad for the leopard. He probably won’t ever be let back into the wild.
Luckily none of the local raptors has worked out how to open the doors or windows and attack the kitties inside our house. The only large flying critters that make it indoors are big brown gum moths and the cats find them quite tasty.
@8 jeffj
“The cat was almost certainly scavenged by the eagle.”
Not where I live, eagles here, in Australia, eat dogs as well as cats. One of my neighbors, who also lived in eagle country, lost two dogs to wedge-tail eagles. Millions of native birds have been massacred by those small furry psychopaths, aided and abetted by their negligent human ‘owners’.
jeffj @ 8:
No. Eagles are predators. Here (ND), they take rabbits, dogs, and cats often. I’ve seen someone’s pet dog get taken, it ain’t pretty. If you want nightmares, find a video of an eagle grabbing a rabbit.
@21 & 22
*Bald eagles* eat fish and scavenge. These are *Bald eagles,* not some Aussie super-predator. It’s pretty easy to look up. It is uncommon for them to take any live mammals, and I expect it would be super rare for anything as big as a cat.
@22: I can match your rural cred and provide anecdotes too: I see plenty of balds where I live and the only live prey I’ve seen is fish. Even there, they’re out-competed by the osprey.
Now, *Golden eagles* are more predatory, but they’re pretty scarce where I live. I’d believe a great horned owl would predate a domestic cat. But – once again – these are Bald eagles. I’d bet my very bottom dollar this cat was scavenged. They’re awesome and majestic, and their resurgence in the last 25 or so years brings a tear to my eye. It’s super cool to see them hold their own against a flock of harassing crows. I know balds are iconic in ‘murica and it’s super tempting to believe they’re vicious killers in the great American tradition, but they’re just not like that.
I live in essentially raptor heaven in Eastern Washington… high desert steppe for the hawks, peregrine falcons, kestrels, and very occasional golden eagle. Rivers for the osprey and bald eagles. Plus a variety of owls. I’ve never been sure the large redtails could actually take a cat- but I choose not to chance it. Add in the coyotes and it’s basically a buffet.