2 I have a phobia of large moths
3 My favourite countries are Japan and Australia
4 I once closed down the BBC bar with Brian Blessed and Jon Downes.
5 At the Fortean Times conference in 2001 I met a man whose only claim to fame was that he was felt up by a tramp in Dorchester.
6 I once helped to dress a little girl up as Captain Beefheart for a tropical fish magazine
7 I’m allergic to Penicillin, blue cheese and seafood.
8 I once met a boy who thought he could create a ‘chicken man’ by impregnating an egg he had gently cracked into a plastic cup.
9 I believe in the literal existence of dragons and have written two books on the subject
10 I have been a Goth for 24 years man and boy
11 I have been bitten by a venomous snake
12 I used to be a zookeeper
13 I think tramps and bag ladies bring joy and wonder to the world
14 My favourite animals are crocodiles, rhinos and the Tasmanian marsupial wolf, thylacine
15 I love British Cult TV
16 I prefer World Cinema to Hollywood
17 I once had a dog named after Spike Milligan
18 I find football to be the most disinteresting subject in the world
19 I like Chinese food but I hate Indian food or indeed anything remotely spicy
20 My favourite bands/ artists are Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Fad Gadget, Bauhaus, Klaus Nomi and Joy Division
21 I think Jon Pertwee was the greatest Doctor Who ever
22 I have never seen The Wizard of Oz or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
23 Of all the countries I have visited I liked Mongolia best of all
24 I think vampires and werewolves have been ‘done to death’ in horror films. Come on: let’s have some more interesting monsters
25. I was at school with a girl who would eat jammie dodgers after they had fallen on the floor and got ants on them.
Sorry, but domestic cats are incredibly smart. Also, far less wantonly destructive than humans.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Richard on domestic cats and common chimps.
ReplyDeleteCats are actually part of the destructive things we do the ecosystems. If someone released a pollutant that caused as much destruction as cats do, we'd want that person fined or thrown in jail.
But in North America, the coyote has proven to be best friend of native birds and small mammals. It is a major cat predator.
http://www.michaelsoule.com/resource_files/124/124_resource_file1.pdf
Once again, as far as domestic cats - it is the fault of humans, not cats. People allow their cats to roam. My cats do not, they live in the house and they go outside when I am outside to watch them. I do sometimes allow them to kill mice that may get into the house (only if I can't catch them to put them out), but outside I always scare away birds or anything else. The whole point is they are suppose to be pets, when people allow them to be wild they go with nature, which has made them an extremely efficient predator.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter if it is cats or chimps - it is really evolution that has made them that way over millions of years -- not because they have come up with some plan to destroy every creature they can.
Let me also say that as far as domestic cats go, I find such posts about them rather alarming. Who knows how many are abused and abandoned by humans every year? Why give more reasons of why they are bad and encourage abusers that they may be doing the right thing by being abusers? Why not instead mention how humans can stop this by merely keeping their cats in the house?
Just to mention -- my dog is just as keen on killing things, but not nearly as good at it. So I guess wanton destruction is only applicable if you have the skill and brains to accomplish it. Otherwise you are some sort of furry, cute thing.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not a pet (dog or cat) is destructive or wantonly vicious is the fault of an owner who's had the animal since its infancy. Just as human children need to be trained not to be wild animals, so do household pets.
ReplyDeleteI've known people who's homes I've avoided because of the behavior of their dogs. Many people train their dogs to be vicious and challenging toward all "strangers".
We regularly hear and read about people being mauled by a neighbor's dog. How often do we hear and read about a child or adult being mauled to death by a neighbor's cat?
I "inherited" a dog from a very ill friend, and after that canine experience I would never again have a dog as a pet. The amount of damage that little dog inflicted on my household far exceeded any done by all of the cats I've had as pets.
And by the way, any house cat that wants to take out some vermin that's gnawed its way or crawled into my home is most welcome to do so.
I said nothing about being crule to cats, i just don't like them.
ReplyDeleteAs was pointed out on this blog a while ago a recent scientific study has proven that dogsare more intelligent than cats.
In general, the cat family has evolved for stronger jaws, larger teeth, and more muscular frames than dogs. Dogs have evolved for larger brains and more endurance.
ReplyDeleteDomestic cats are a mesopredator. They serve about the same ecological role as brush-tailed possums or gray foxes.
The problem in North America is that mesopredator abundance is now much, much higher than it once was, and the bulk of that increase is in introduced Mesopotamian wildcats. Contrary to popular belief, domestic cats were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, not Egypt. The subspecies is the same, which is unfortunately still called the African wildcat, even though it is also found in the Middle East.
But it's not just cat numbers that have skyrocketed since North America became "civilized." We have many more opossums and raccoons than we once did. This, coupled with pollution, excessive hunting, and habitat destruction, are destroying our native songbird populations.
That's why I am glad that coyotes are stepping into the void left behind by the wolves that we exterminated. They are the saviors of so many species. We just now are starting to realize it.
BTW, dogs do have an ecological impact in some areas.
ReplyDeleteHowever, dogs tend to have less of an impact, because, unlike cats, dogs have to learn much of their predatory behavior. They have the inherited motor patterns for predation, but they have to learn how to implement it efficiently. That's why most feral dogs just scavenge.
The cat just has to learn which prey to hunt, and once it learns that, it becomes a very efficient predator.