600 cats, 1,200 pigeons, a few ant colonies, and an island the size of New Zealand. How do you think theyll evolve?

600 cats, 1,200 pigeons, a few ant colonies, and an island the size of New Zealand. How do you think they’ll evolve?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    If the cats don't instantly starve you'll see a big cat/ostrich equivalent as quick as evolution allows

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Isolated evolution is fascinating, local science exhibits or towns should make those sealed glass terrariums but bigger and put them on display. Imagine going to the park and checking up on the latest evolution and battles of the isolated insects and plants.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I've always been fascinated by the idea of gradually adding more water to a large terrarium

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Most cats die off relatively early. If the species does survive, its members will be very few and they'll behave as lone hunters that need a very large range to hunt. Pigeons diversify, some of them becoming piscivores kinda like puffins. Ants will be fine. I learned today that leafcutters can farm fungi in their nests for food, using leaf cuttings as a substrate for the fungi to grow upon. Truly amazing shit. They'd make up like 80% of the animal biomass on the island.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The cats would probably be whittled down to 100-150

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    i’d suspect that many of the cats would die initially, and the survivors would become highly specialized. The pigeons would have an INSANE populaton boom followed by rapid radiation into grouse-like birds. The cats would likely end up being specialized into civet and medium-predator (think bobcat) niches, and the pigeons would become birds of prey, remain the same, and become ground-nesting Birds.
    I saw a lot of people say that all the cats would starve, and while their population would definitely be small, at least initially, the island would be bursting at the seams with pigeons pretty damn quickly. As someone who’s seen both feral cats and pigeons come and go, pigeons can balloon from 40-60 birds to 300 in a month, with cat predation in mind, and this island has way more then 40 birds. Pretty good premise OP.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Cat would breed like rats and kill all the pigeons, ants will eat whatever and probably evolve to fight each other once there's too many colonies

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Cats would kill off all the pigeons and then die off themselves. Ants would eat the corpses. Maybe some pigeons would find some place safe and survive and become flightless. No cats would survive.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I mean there’d probably be a massive cat boom at first but I doubt they’d all starve

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        *be extirpated

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      No. The island is the size of New Zealand so the pigeons can easily stay safe from 600 cats. All cats will starve within a few months. Pigeons will multiply like crazy, then some will evolve to be carnivores as fast as evolution allows it. At the same time some pigeons will become flighless and large. Maybe some will get specialized beaks to eat ants. It will basically be a complete pigeon ecosystem.
      Ants will just stay ants but instead of other insects they'll eat each other.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Oooh I thought you meant the cats would eat them to extinction and then starve
        That makes sense my bad

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          ???
          The post you're responding to was my first post.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Well which one is it starvation or evasion

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        What if the island were smaller, like the size of Corsica, and instead of pigeons it was rabbits

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Still 8,722 km2 so that's about 1 rabbit per 8 square kilometers.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            So there’s a cat population drop and a rabbit boom, with the population balance being heavily in favor of the rabbits. I just really want a cat island lol

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              Cats would go extinct in no time. A typical population density for rabbits is 100 per square kilometer, so if you multiply your number of rabbits by 1000 it might work.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Why would rabbits inhabit an island with the same population density they inhabit continents with
                It’s far more likely that their overall population would be smaller

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                And i highly doubt you’d need 12,000 fricking rabbits to support a starting population of 600 cats

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              > I just really want a cat island lol

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >pigeons can easily stay safe from 600 cats
        The reason feral cats are so destructive in their invasive range is partially because they are effective hunters.
        >Pigeons will multiply like crazy
        Which would feed the cats, 600 is far from a population bottle neck and the cats would likely scavenge each other.
        I agree with you on the evolution path of the birds and ants but I really think there's carrying capacity for the cats on this island. If they survived I'd bet they stay small and specialize on a specific branch of pigeon. Along the lines of a civet.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          So you think the cats would become heavily arboreal?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Depends on flora/landscape but I think lots of cats go that way evolutionarily

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >The reason feral cats are so destructive in their invasive range is partially because they are effective hunters.
          Not when there are 1200 prey animals on an island the size of New Zealand. Also in real life we artificially boost cat numbers so they can be destructive without actually being able to sustain themselves.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            cats are able to drive species with much wider ranges then the size of New Zealand to extinction, often on continents
            Pigeons are really, really easy prey
            And with how many pigeons there are, the likelihood that cats would starve is pretty low

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              >cats are able to drive species with much wider ranges then the size of New Zealand to extinction
              Those species also have to compete with other animals and, as I already said, cat populations are artificially boosted. They're not brought to extinction by 600 cats who will instantly starve to death. Even 1200 chickens would survive the cats because New Zealand is 268,021 square kilometers so on average the cats would have to explore an area of 200 square kilometers to find one chicken.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                First off, pigeons and chickens are very, very different animals
                Second off, do you have any idea how fast pigeons reproduce?

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >Second off, do you have any idea how fast pigeons reproduce?
                Doesn't matter, all cats will starve before there are enough pigeons. You're still ignoring how big New Zealand is.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Feral cats have basically a permanent population in the more or less uninhabited Australian Outback, which is much, much bigger then New Zealand, and much, much more hostile to life

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >so these birds will likely double their population in a matter of months and keep doing so.
                That's nothing. I just looked up how long a cat can go without food. It's only two weeks lmao, it's worse than I thought.
                >pigeons have a preferred nesting ground and are social animals. They're not going to spread out at random they are going to cluster in flocks around rocky cliffs.
                I guess then it could depend on whether you intentionally drop the cats off at the right spot, which OP didn't specify.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >two weeks
                Exactly, that's literally just a couple of birds per cat until the first squabs start to fledge. Sure all of the cats won't manage but I addressed that.
                But yeah the biggest flaw with OP's situation is not knowing what the landscape is like, not knowing if there's other native animals, where and when the cats and pigeons will get dropped off etc. Too many variables really.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Sorry bout that, the fictional island I had in mind is mostly grassland with a few wooded areas
                Think Michigan terrain

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                So as I pointed out pigeons are social and prefer rocky cliffs to nest, this is also why they do well in urban areas. They're gonna group up around any landscape like this that they can find. They feed primarily on seeds. So open flat grasslands is where they will go to feed and that's when they're gonna be vulnerable. So if the cats do survive and hone in on these birds they would adapt to ambushing in the grass, which they're already pretty good at. Then it's just the evolutionary arms race after that.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Feral cats in real life prey on several rodent, lizard and bird species. Pigeons usually aren't a major part of their diet and only being able to hunt for one species is limiting.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >all cats
                Majority, but I can see a solid 1 cat/km stable population at least.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Pigeons have pretty quick turn around. No mating season, always laying clutches of two eggs, from laying to fully fledged is less than two months. 600 mating pairs. That island is gonna be swarming with birds in no time and it only takes a handful of cats to be successful to keep they're population going. I really think they have a chance.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              1,200 mating pairs actually

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Wait no I’m stupid sorry

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              To add to this I would also point out that pigeons have a preferred nesting ground and are social animals. They're not going to spread out at random they are going to cluster in flocks around rocky cliffs.
              Like I said they propagate like crazy so the biggest limiting factor is the cats, so these birds will likely double their population in a matter of months and keep doing so.
              Then on the cat side of the equation, as long as there's enough genetic viability spread throughout they could theoretically bottleneck down to a handful of animals with no issue and specialize in on catching these birds before reaching a stable population size.

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