Humans are a part of the natural world, and human activities have an enormous impact on worldwide ecosystems. The impact is so great, some scientists think the current geological era we live in now should be known as the Anthropocene. The animals and plants that are best able to adapt to Anthropocene living conditions have the best chance of surviving into the future. I call it survival of the fittest during the Anthropocene. When I used this phrase on twitter in defense of cats, whiny woke wimps showered their fury at me. One anonymous jerk called me a ninny, short for pickaninny, a derogatory term for a black child. Darren Naish, a world-renowned vertebrate zoologist, clicked on the like button for this racist tweet, then blocked me because I don’t agree that cats are detrimental to the environment. I don’t think Naish is a racist–he probably didn’t know ninny was a racist term. He may be an expert on vertebrate zoology, but his knowledge of other topics is apparently limited.
I like animals capable of thriving during the Anthropocene. Cats are 1 of the best examples of an organism well adapted to living alongside humans. They can survive with or without people, existing in conditions ranging from being pampered to total neglect. Cats are a commensal species with humans and will occur wherever humans live, whether woke ecologists like it or not. Some scientists unfairly demonize cats. Most of the studies purporting to show how cats are detrimental to ecosystems are so bad I can’t understand how they get published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Perhaps, the most famous paper (widely regurgitated without question in the media) claimed cats killed an estimated 94 million birds per year in the U.S. The author of that paper simply made-up numbers using wild guessing. Cats do kill birds on occasion, but they are taking the place of natural predators that would live in the area, if it had remained wilderness. Some species of songbirds have artificially inflated populations in suburban locations because humans create favorable nesting structures, maintain bird feeders, and suppress natural predator populations. A cat killing a songbird in the suburbs is actually restoring a balance. Moreover, cats control rodents and rabbits, species that spread disease and actually compete with humans for food.
Ross Barnett is another scientist always whining about cats on twitter. The sadistic hypocrite favors bringing the lynx back to Great Britain where they have been extirpated, but he participated in a cat eradication program in Australia. Cat eradication programs in that part of the world have been disastrous. Rat and rabbit populations exploded wherever cats were eliminated. Rats ate all the birds the eradication programs were supposed to protect, and rabbits denuded the landscape. How can Barnett lament the loss of the lynx, but favor the destruction of an animal so similar? His reasoning makes no sense.
I don’t like the term, invasive species. Every successful organism has been invasive at some point in its evolutionary history. They originated at 1 location and invaded surrounding territory. I prefer to call them newly colonizing species, and I think they increase diversity. House sparrows are 1 of my favorite newly colonizing species, and they are well adapted to surviving the Anthropocene. They are commonly found in grocery store parking lots, and some even live inside the stores. Few other birds (with the exceptions of pigeons and ring-billed gulls) can be found thriving in parking lots.
House sparrows are one of my favorite newly colonizing species. They are common in grocery store parking lots, and some times even live inside the stores.
Bradford pears are another 1 of my favorite newly colonizing species. Many ecologists revile this species because of the way they take over abandoned fields at the expense of native species. I think they contribute greatly to the beauty of the landscape. They provide white flowers in spring, attractive foliage in fall, and food and nesting for birds.
Instead of lamenting all of the organisms incapable of surviving during the Anthropocene, people should appreciate the tough species that can survive in a world dominated by humans.
GeorgiaBeforePeople 