Christ. I just wanted to know if foxes could replace cats as pest control. I thought about this, because unlike cats, they are a formidable opponent to a rat.
In line with what someone else said here, theoretically someone could keep a "barn fox" by means of shuttering the barn so that escape for such a large animal is impossible, but rodents and pests could get in to never get out. That could solve the chicken issue.
I live in an urban neighbourhood with a large park/grove nearby which encompasses some hills and a forest, and we have always had many stray cats around. Recently, a family of foxes has descended down to the suburb (in search of food, presumably) and they've actually culled the population of stray cats within a few months
Basically no animal that hunts only to fill its belly will be effective rat control. They are too smart and too fecund, and too good at evading larger predators. Only animals bred to have absurd drive to murder rats will ever be effective pest control. Even the people who use mink to hunt rats are using the mink to flush rats to dogs because even mink aren't bloodthirsty enough.
Just clean your shit up. That's all it takes for 95% of people and for people who run commercial poultry operations and people who are running feedlot cattle operations, hire an exterminator to come by once a month with traps and bait.
>for people who run commercial poultry operations and people who are running feedlot cattle operations
Just clean your shit up applies to these people too. Putting metal lids over or removing feed at night and using feeders designed to minimize spillage makes a world of difference in both wasted feed and rodents.
This is old as fuck man, we now know that >ignoring kit, swift, arctic and gray foxes being native because this chart only takes red foxes into account >red foxes were not brought to north america via europeans, they came down through canada
This is old as fuck man, we now know that >ignoring kit, swift, arctic and gray foxes being native because this chart only takes red foxes into account >red foxes were not brought to north america via europeans, they came down through canada
> cats were never a pest control method
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK HUMANS GAIN FROM HAVING A BIG HAIRY BASTARDS AROUND THE HOUSE? YOU THINK A 10TH CENTURY MONK IS GONNA POST SOME PARCHMENT OF HIS HECKIN CHONKER ONTO THE FUCKING CHURCH? WE DOMESTICATED CATS BECAUSE THE FUCKING RATS KEPT EATING ALL OF OUR STUFF AND PROVIDING NOTHING LIKE AN OBESE KID WITH DOWNS SYNDROME. DO YOU THINK? EVER? HAVE YOU AT ANY POINT IN YOUR LIFE SAT DOWN AND HAD A THOUGHT THAT WASNT ABOUT HOW YOUR ASSHOLE TASTES? BECAUSE HOLY FUCK KID
Absolutely fucking nothing. They gain nothing, but a cute cat that feeds itself. They have never, ever gotten rid of rats. They just make them behave more carefully, so humans do not observe any rats. But, because the rats continue to multiply, there are as many ever and removing the cats causes an immediate "plague" (of all the rats that were already there running out enthusiastically).
Rats don't even eat that much grain so unless your grain accounting was within 1-5% you would never know if they were gone or not, short of a proper inspection.
Cats are basically a good luck talisman and their reputation is rooted in idiocy and superstition. Everyone who actually NEEDS pest control doesn't let cats near their shit and hasn't for hundreds of years.
For reference: the best ratting cat on record, towser, never got rid of rats or mice. Cats are lazy passive hunters. They can't and won't. They prefer easier prey.
>BBBBUT BUT BUT BUT... I SAW A CAT KILL A RAT! 7 DAYS A WEEK!
Yes, that isn't actually that many rats, considering how fast they reproduce. Cats prey upon the stupid but meaty juveniles, while the infants and breeding adults are below or above their notice. You saw the cat killing a rat every day because there was never a shortage of rats. The cat has no motivation to kill off its food source.
humans spent two and a half million years in the stone age. imagine that. two and a half million years banging rocks together and making fire and nobody tried melting a shiny rock and making something out of that.
humans domesticated dogs 40,000 years ago. for about 20,000 of those years, dogs are borderline indistinguishable from wolves. it is now thought that they self domesticated and initial interactions weren't quite "working dog" and were more like "follow the big husky and see if they catch a deer or not".
is spending ten thousand years with a useless animal that's just cute and fluffy really that surprising to you? humans were not significantly harmed by the presence of the cat and its benefits were entirely psychological, so it had no reason to leave. humans lost no resources feeding the cats because rats and mice are infinite in number. cats co-exist with rodents and as a reward you get to pet a cat.
>WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK HUMANS GAIN FROM HAVING A BIG HAIRY BASTARDS AROUND THE HOUSE?
Fluffy soft kitty hehehee >YOU THINK A 10TH CENTURY MONK IS GONNA POST SOME PARCHMENT OF HIS HECKIN CHONKER ONTO THE FUCKING CHURCH?
Yes. >WE DOMESTICATED CATS
Cats domesticated themselves because the least aggressive, skittish ones were less likely to be chased out or killed and there was abundant food, from prey to scraps, near humans. Dogs also domesticated themselves the same way. >BECAUSE THE FUCKING RATS KEPT EATING ALL OUR STUFF
It would take 22 rats focusing on one bag of grain to eat one pound of it in a night. Most rats are going to be scattered around eating spilled grain, garbage, and bugs. If you have hundreds of pounds of grain that you are also using, you'll never notice rats eating all your stuff.
But cats don't kill enough of them to matter. So What do they do? They scare them.
What rats do is spread disease, and because cats make rats extremely paranoid to the point that they will hold in their shit and piss to avoid being tracked, having rats, but scared rats, means less disease is spread than if you have ballsy rats crawling all over you while you sleep. Especially considering that plague is spread by fleas that live on the rats, not the rats themselves. Less rat contact is better than nothing even if you still have rats. But, it's not a situation we consider acceptable these days because having paranoid rats is considered just as bad as having brave rats. As an added downside, you also have shit, piss, and parasites being spread by the cats, with the diseases of the cats being contracted from the rats. You can actually get plague from a cat. This is why black cats might be bad luck - it's harder to see fleas on them.
Cats also, unfortunately, can contract plague and spread airborne plague all on their own.
https://www.cdc.gov/plague/healthcare/veterinarians.html#:~:text=Background,develop%20clinical%20illness%20than%20cats.
Christ. I just wanted to know if foxes could replace cats as pest control. I thought about this, because unlike cats, they are a formidable opponent to a rat.
In line with what someone else said here, theoretically someone could keep a "barn fox" by means of shuttering the barn so that escape for such a large animal is impossible, but rodents and pests could get in to never get out. That could solve the chicken issue.
I live in an urban neighbourhood with a large park/grove nearby which encompasses some hills and a forest, and we have always had many stray cats around. Recently, a family of foxes has descended down to the suburb (in search of food, presumably) and they've actually culled the population of stray cats within a few months
Basically no animal that hunts only to fill its belly will be effective rat control. They are too smart and too fecund, and too good at evading larger predators. Only animals bred to have absurd drive to murder rats will ever be effective pest control. Even the people who use mink to hunt rats are using the mink to flush rats to dogs because even mink aren't bloodthirsty enough.
Just clean your shit up. That's all it takes for 95% of people and for people who run commercial poultry operations and people who are running feedlot cattle operations, hire an exterminator to come by once a month with traps and bait.
>for people who run commercial poultry operations and people who are running feedlot cattle operations
Just clean your shit up applies to these people too. Putting metal lids over or removing feed at night and using feeders designed to minimize spillage makes a world of difference in both wasted feed and rodents.
>introduce non native species to control another invasive
>the newly introduced animal becomes invasive
are we really going to keep doing this?
Foxes are native everywhere that matters.
Cats don't kill rodents at a rate sufficient to halt or reverse their population growth trend unless you have so many cats they are vermin themselves.
This is old as fuck man, we now know that
>ignoring kit, swift, arctic and gray foxes being native because this chart only takes red foxes into account
>red foxes were not brought to north america via europeans, they came down through canada
This is the real one.
>no red fox on cape breton island
that's horseshit, i saw one the other day, he had a rabbit in his chops
No, we're not having an entire thread about ruining foxes
Ruining?
Considering cats were never once a pest control method? The bar is not high.
Seethe furry
> cats were never a pest control method
WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK HUMANS GAIN FROM HAVING A BIG HAIRY BASTARDS AROUND THE HOUSE? YOU THINK A 10TH CENTURY MONK IS GONNA POST SOME PARCHMENT OF HIS HECKIN CHONKER ONTO THE FUCKING CHURCH? WE DOMESTICATED CATS BECAUSE THE FUCKING RATS KEPT EATING ALL OF OUR STUFF AND PROVIDING NOTHING LIKE AN OBESE KID WITH DOWNS SYNDROME. DO YOU THINK? EVER? HAVE YOU AT ANY POINT IN YOUR LIFE SAT DOWN AND HAD A THOUGHT THAT WASNT ABOUT HOW YOUR ASSHOLE TASTES? BECAUSE HOLY FUCK KID
Absolutely fucking nothing. They gain nothing, but a cute cat that feeds itself. They have never, ever gotten rid of rats. They just make them behave more carefully, so humans do not observe any rats. But, because the rats continue to multiply, there are as many ever and removing the cats causes an immediate "plague" (of all the rats that were already there running out enthusiastically).
https://travislongcore.net/2021/05/15/no-chicago-feral-cats-dont-control-rats/
Rats don't even eat that much grain so unless your grain accounting was within 1-5% you would never know if they were gone or not, short of a proper inspection.
Cats are basically a good luck talisman and their reputation is rooted in idiocy and superstition. Everyone who actually NEEDS pest control doesn't let cats near their shit and hasn't for hundreds of years.
For reference: the best ratting cat on record, towser, never got rid of rats or mice. Cats are lazy passive hunters. They can't and won't. They prefer easier prey.
>BBBBUT BUT BUT BUT... I SAW A CAT KILL A RAT! 7 DAYS A WEEK!
Yes, that isn't actually that many rats, considering how fast they reproduce. Cats prey upon the stupid but meaty juveniles, while the infants and breeding adults are below or above their notice. You saw the cat killing a rat every day because there was never a shortage of rats. The cat has no motivation to kill off its food source.
humans spent two and a half million years in the stone age. imagine that. two and a half million years banging rocks together and making fire and nobody tried melting a shiny rock and making something out of that.
humans domesticated dogs 40,000 years ago. for about 20,000 of those years, dogs are borderline indistinguishable from wolves. it is now thought that they self domesticated and initial interactions weren't quite "working dog" and were more like "follow the big husky and see if they catch a deer or not".
is spending ten thousand years with a useless animal that's just cute and fluffy really that surprising to you? humans were not significantly harmed by the presence of the cat and its benefits were entirely psychological, so it had no reason to leave. humans lost no resources feeding the cats because rats and mice are infinite in number. cats co-exist with rodents and as a reward you get to pet a cat.
>WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK HUMANS GAIN FROM HAVING A BIG HAIRY BASTARDS AROUND THE HOUSE?
Fluffy soft kitty hehehee
>YOU THINK A 10TH CENTURY MONK IS GONNA POST SOME PARCHMENT OF HIS HECKIN CHONKER ONTO THE FUCKING CHURCH?
Yes.
>WE DOMESTICATED CATS
Cats domesticated themselves because the least aggressive, skittish ones were less likely to be chased out or killed and there was abundant food, from prey to scraps, near humans. Dogs also domesticated themselves the same way.
>BECAUSE THE FUCKING RATS KEPT EATING ALL OUR STUFF
It would take 22 rats focusing on one bag of grain to eat one pound of it in a night. Most rats are going to be scattered around eating spilled grain, garbage, and bugs. If you have hundreds of pounds of grain that you are also using, you'll never notice rats eating all your stuff.
But cats don't kill enough of them to matter. So What do they do? They scare them.
What rats do is spread disease, and because cats make rats extremely paranoid to the point that they will hold in their shit and piss to avoid being tracked, having rats, but scared rats, means less disease is spread than if you have ballsy rats crawling all over you while you sleep. Especially considering that plague is spread by fleas that live on the rats, not the rats themselves. Less rat contact is better than nothing even if you still have rats. But, it's not a situation we consider acceptable these days because having paranoid rats is considered just as bad as having brave rats. As an added downside, you also have shit, piss, and parasites being spread by the cats, with the diseases of the cats being contracted from the rats. You can actually get plague from a cat. This is why black cats might be bad luck - it's harder to see fleas on them.
Cats also, unfortunately, can contract plague and spread airborne plague all on their own.
https://www.cdc.gov/plague/healthcare/veterinarians.html#:~:text=Background,develop%20clinical%20illness%20than%20cats.
>Ackchually cats don't kill mice
Ok paleoschizo
>YOU THINK A 10TH CENTURY MONK IS GONNA POST SOME PARCHMENT OF HIS HECKIN CHONKER ONTO THE FUCKING CHURCH?
he has no idea does he
fucking redditors
> nose ring
sjw cat
>all those seething dogschizo wall of text replies
based post
so what you're saying is
catfag: stupid redditor, illiterate, uneducated, writes twitter posts at a 3rd grade level
dogfag: intellectual Waufner, reads books, writes essays
nobody mentioned cats actually
“cats” is the 5th in the OP
catre literacy at its finest
not in the post he was replying to
>catre
?