Australians cook up wild cat stew

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Australians cook up wild cat stew

MMMMM.... kiiitty....

Good for them, but aren't the cats keeping the rodents in control?

To my understanding, their usefulness as a means of rodent control is being overshadowed by the damage they've been causing to other populations of wildlife. In the United States we've had trouble in some areas with feral cats having a severe impact on several types of rare birds. Some species have even become threatened through such predation.

But if we don't have the predation, sparrows fill the sky and mice and rats run out of control.

Of course this is under considerable dispute, but the argument is that there would be sufficient predation without so many feral cats.

It seems like the only significant native predator in Australia is the dingo. That's a dog that the first settlers took with them about 3,000 years ago. Crocodiles, snakes, and spiders make little impact against rodent populations, and feral cats can't do much to animals larger than rodents and small birds.

It is interesting to see how those seemingly delicate balances shift and transform over time, isn't it? It's always quite a science to deduce what approach would be best for humans to take when it comes to conservation measures, and even then our good-intentioned plans sometimes go awry.

lolcopters!

"The woman behind the controversial cat stew recipe has said Australians could do their bit to help the environment by tucking into more feral pests, including pigeons and camels."

Catmeat I was aware was a foodsource in some places, much like dogs. Pigeons have been eaten for years. But Im most interested in the camels. Sounds like a fascinating food source, and given their size, quite an efficient one.

As for eating the feral cats: problem is Australia developed in isolation from the rest of the flora and fauna of the world, so when someone introduces something new, it tends to seriously unbalance the whole ecosystem. Keeping the numbers down of invasive new species probably wont hurt.

hunting camel is illegal in Arizona.

While feral cats are a major problem in Australia (despite what you think Remnant), I wouldn't eat a cat.

I would have thought that a feral cat would be mostly lean and stringy, and unless aussie moggies are particularly large, there wouldnt be all that much meat on them

Thinking on that.. Ive seen how big the aussie mice get.. huge great bouncy things, big as a man. Bet the feral cats are HUGE...