Stuff You Should Know - Cats: Invasive Species?

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Josh and Chuck wade into dangerous waters with the debate over just how destructive cats are for local ecosystems (turns out it’s pretty bad) and some ideas on what to do about that (you may not want to know). Tune in and tense up!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the hornet's nest. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, Jerry's here, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Josh's idea. Yeah. As I was researching this, I started

sweating like cartoon bullets off of my forehead. Like I was little orphan Annie or something when she startled. Yeah, I get it. Or Nancy. Nancy's a better one. Do you remember Nancy? Sort of. Yeah, yeah. I remember Nancy and Sluggo. Yeah, so she is one of the great overlooked comic strips of all time and she's still going on. She's got a new breath of life in her. She's using computers and the internet and everything, but same great like almost kind of subversive humor and outlook that Nancy always had. Check it out. I haven't looked at the funny papers in a long time. Do they still have the old favorites? Yeah, but I don't think they call them funny papers anymore.

Because they're not funny. They never were. No, no. Plus no one wants to point out that it's made of paper. The comics. Yeah, I used to love Beetle Bay, of course, Garfield and Bloom County and when I got a little bit older, someone that got a little political that was so good. Sally Forth. No. Got political? Yeah, not Bloom County, but the other one that was... Dunesbury? Yeah, Dunesbury. Oh yeah, that one was always political. And then Beetle Bailey. Love Beetle Bailey. What about Haggard the Horrible? He was fine. Family circus, I liked it at the time, but looking back, it was the least funny comic in history. It was. It was cute. Brenda Starr. Mark Trail.

Mary Worth. Mark Trail. What was going on with that guy? It was just a nature propaganda disguise, just a comic strip. Really was? You know, nature propaganda, Save the Earth and all that. Big nature. So that's funny that you say that because there's a group of people who are involved in today's topic that possibly refer to their opponents as big nature. Weirdly, Chuck. Like, I don't think they do, but the same sense and sensibility is still there. Jane Austen reference. Second one in the, in two podcasts. That's right. So yeah, I mean, can we just caveat this episode?

You said it was a hornet's nest. This is about cats, domestic cats being an invasive species. I'm sorry, but they are. I love cats. I've got two cats. I've always had cats. Always love cats. I will always have cats. So this has nothing to do with being anti or pro cat. It is just dissecting sort of the scientific problem of cats. It's in the same way that cats dissect birds and small mammals for sport. Right. Which we talked about a lot, but we'll talk about it a lot more. Yeah. So I'm with you, Chuck. And like, we're, you know, it is an issue and it's a problem. And one of the things that's contributing to making it a problem is that the two sides are

so diametrically opposed and so over one another that there's a, there's just no conversation going on. And then the general public, like you and me, are just kind of blissfully unaware of this and then just get goose every once in a while when the media kind of picks up this issue or runs a headline or an article about it. And the idea is, like you said, that it's pretty, pretty much widely held among wildlife and conservation biologists that cats, house cats, and specifically feral cats are an invasive species around the world and have they wreak enormous havoc, including species extinction in the habitats and our backyards and the habitats that they, they inhabit. But before we really kind of get into that and lay out the case one way or another,

we should probably talk about the cat and where, where the cat came from and why they hang out in our backyards to begin with. That's right. We should. They came, we think, from the mid-east with not mid-east as in Virginia. That's not the mid-east. That's the Middle East. That's the mid-Atlantic. Yeah. The Middle East of planet Earth, which was a, you know, these wildcats from the forest called Felis Silvestris, which is interesting. I never thought about Silvestris the cat taking its name. Or Felix the cat. Yeah. Or Felix taking their names from the original cats.

But that is the thought is that they came from there, were most likely domesticated about 12,000 years ago, and we don't know for sure. But the general thought is once we started becoming an agriculturally based society and we had grain and seed to store, then the mice and the rats started coming around and the wildcats started coming around to take care of that problem. And humans were like, hey, this is fine with us. And then over time, some of those cats got a little friendlier than others. And the people were like, oh, you like a little scratch under the neck, huh? Well, you want to come inside and have some milk? Shouldn't give cats milk. But they didn't know that at the time. And that's the best idea we have going of how cats initially became domesticated.

Yeah. And there's evidence of cats being domesticated that come from Cyprus, where there are no native cats. So cat bones and cat fossils are ostensibly domesticated because they would have had to have been taken there by humans, by ship. It's possible the cats stowed away, but it's also just as possible that 8,000 years ago, when this cat bone on Cyprus is from, the cat was domesticated enough to ride along aboard a ship with sailors. And then there's another cat fossil from about 1,500 years earlier than that. So just under 10,000 years ago, where the cat was deliberately buried with the human, which strongly also suggests domestication. So it's not a really big stretch that by about 12,000 years ago, and we started storing surplus

grain, that's about the time when cats and humans really started to kind of coincide. Yeah. And I think you would probably best describe this as a mutualistic relationship at this point, because both species are benefiting. We have talked in the past about commensalism. And maybe that's how one might have described it, which is like cats are eating the mice, humans were like fine, big whoop, we don't really care. But I would say it's probably more mutualistic, don't you think? Yes, absolutely. Again, I posit that there's no such thing as commensalism. I think both parties somehow, some way, always are either benefited or harmed by this situation. And this is a great example of that, because if we're growing surplus, if we're

growing grain, we have surplus to feed more and more people, and last us through the winter, whatever, we have these grain stores. If mice and rats come along and eat our grain, that's a problem for us. And if the cats come along and eat the mice or the rats, that solves our problem. So the cat is getting to eat all of this food that's showing up at these grain stores, where otherwise they would have to go and hunt all over the place. The cat's benefiting, we're benefiting mutualism. That's right. I agree. Okay. You don't have to talk me into it, buddy. Okay, I'll lay off then. I'll lay off. We need t-shirts, man. Do we still have t-shirts? Oh, I don't know. No, neither. I haven't seen them in a while. We've never done a good job at

promoting that stuff. No. That's all right. So here's the deal with cats as an invasive species, though, is they are very hardy as a species. They survive, even though they don't have a real natural range, they can live in many, many different environments successfully. And there are, obviously, your pet cats, which I don't think we said what was the name of the domesticated cat, finally. Felis catus, which sounds like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, you know, like when Roadrunner would, would they freeze frame, you know? Yes. It's basically what they would write, but that's it. Yeah, totally. It was unimaginative as a cat. So you've got your feral cats and you've got your cats that live inside houses, but also freely roam outside, like, like, oh, I have a pet cat,

but it never comes inside because I don't like changing litter boxes. So we have outdoor cats. And then there's the feral cat. And those are the two cats that are causing problems. And they are very much different. And this is from the Gravster. He points out they're very different than other, quote unquote, domestic invasive species that you might have as a pet, because we talked about the Burmese python problem in Florida. Those aren't truly domesticated. And then there are feral dog populations in the world. And they do cause problems, but not like cats do. No, definitely not. So apparently there's also like a really good case that's made that cats aren't truly domesticated either, which rings a bell to me from our animal domestication episode.

Yeah, I think I remember that. I think they're considered semi domestic, actually. They're prisoners. But they're all intense and perp, basically. Or no, they just come and go as they please. They're, they, they hang around us as much as they want to, you know? All right. Well, speaking of hanging out, let's take a little break and we'll get to the grizzly details of what these cats do. Cause even though we've said it before, you might not have heard that episode. You might think, what would my sweet little cat do if let outside besides just creep around? Well, we'll tell you what they'll do right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck. So I think anybody who owns a cat that's not 100% indoor cat has had some experience or other where their cat has shown up on their doorstep with

a present of a bird, a mouse, a small rodent, baby squirrel, baby seal depending on where you are. But some little animal where the cat is saying either, hey, I want you to have this. I really appreciate all of the fancy feasts. Or they theorize that possibly the cat is keeping a toy that it was playing with earlier. It's brought it home to like hang on to. Or it's following in its, I guess, kind of evolutionary impulse to teach other cats how to hunt. It's teaching you how to hunt. That's what it's bringing. Those are the big main theories that I saw. Yeah. Like see how it's done, buddy? Yeah. You see this bird? Can you do that? And you may be horrified when the cat does that. You may also be like, you know, Felix, come on, you can't do that. Where's this bird's

head anyway? And then just kind of forget about it. Put it out of your mind. Maybe you go to the trouble of burying the bird, which is nice if you do that. But you just move along with your day. Your cat might do that a few times a year. And if you multiply that by the number of cats who are roaming around and you multiply that by the number of feral cats, you suddenly get into really, really, really big numbers. And the idea of just how destructive invasive cats are really kind of comes into focus. Yeah. So here are numbers from about nine years ago in 2013. And this is kind of hard to track, but they do the best job that they can with these numbers. Domestic cats, these are to say pet cats and feral cats. And we should say that feral cats kill

about three times as more animals and birds as domestic cats. But between 1.4 and 3.7 billion with a bee, birds, and 6.9, and this is a big range, to 20.7 billion mammals a year. This is every single year. And you found some more stats that really kind of put a cherry on top here. Rodents are linked to the extinction of 75 different species. Cats are linked to the extinction of 63 different species where they have completely been extinct. 40 bird species, 21 mammal species, and two reptile species. Right. So we should say that the species extinction, that's global, they think. Those numbers that you said between up to around 4 billion birds and as many as 20 plus billion mammals every year, Chuck, that's in the United States alone. And not

only in the United States alone, that's just in the contiguous 48 states alone every year. That's what this 2013 study between Smithsonian Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluded. Right. So there are people and, you know, we'll get to, you know, some of the possible solutions later on. But if you talk to the head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in a Pete Mara, he will say very clearly that there should be a zero tolerance for free-ranging cats. They should be trapped. They should be removed and not returned. And then goes on to say more things that are a little more grizzly should be done if you have no other choices, which is euthanasia, professional hunters, poisons, stuff like that. Right. But, you know,

that sounds, and it is super harsh. And if you're a cat person, you're just, like, horrified right now. But what about the bird people, you know? Right. So that's why there's the opposition on one side are wildlife biologists and conservationists. And on the other side, you know, cat advocates and activists. And they're budding heads over this. And it's like a really big, it's a huge issue, one way or another. And one side is saying, just leave them alone. And the other side is like, no, we can't leave them alone or else they're going to continue to create species extinctions and kill billions and billions of birds and small mammals every year. And there's a lot of ways that they might do this. There's a story of a cat named Tibbles. Oh, man. This is crazy.

It was a single female cat who arrived on a little island off of New Zealand called Stevens Island in the 1890s. There were no cats there. In fact, there were no predatory mammals. So much so that the little Stevens Island rend lost its ability to fly. It had no reason to fly. It had all the food it needed on the island. It didn't need to escape predation. So they lost their ability to fly and became one of just three flightless songbirds in the world. And now we have two species of flightless songbirds in the world thanks to Tibbles and the litter that she had. That's right. Tibbles arrived pregnant. And I mean, this is a very clear cut case of one pregnant cat showed up and literally Tibbles in the offspring made the Stevens Island rend

no more. It is completely extinct. Yeah. And so that's one single instance where they can say this cat did this. And I've even seen it like said in places like this, the legend goes or the story goes or something like that. So I'm not 100% certain on exactly how well documented it is. And more to the point, even if that is 100% accurate, it's really difficult to extrapolate that onto the rest of the world, onto wildlife in general. There's a lot of factors and a lot of pressures that go into a species going extinct. But from what I'm seeing, the conservation biologists and wildlife biologists who are doing meta-analyses of smaller studies and putting the numbers together, they typically tend to make suppositions on the lower end. So these numbers may actually

be under reported. They may be much higher than what we think. But the upshot of it is that there seems to be a, cats seem to be, if not directly or solely responsible in some cases, they are largely responsible for some species extinction. That's right. Cats also spread disease. If you look at rabies in 2014, it's not that long ago, cats accounted for 61% of all rabid domestic animals in the United States. So like, I don't know, people talk about like possums and raccoons and they're just, and rats and they're just like, Oh God, they're, you know, rabid animals. Yet they will feed a stray, you know, feral cat, which is something that even, you know, animal people say you shouldn't do because that just means they will reproduce and there will

be more feral cats and feral cats don't do so well. They struggle to live and they get hurt and they get hit by cars and they get run over. And I think a large percentage of the litter doesn't even make it past six months. So if you love cats, you shouldn't be feeding feral cats. Yeah. It's a little, you know, it's hard to wrap your head around it, but that's, if you want a healthy population of cats, you shouldn't feed feral cats. Right. It does seem very paradoxical and even mean, but we'll get into a little more why. But one of the things you said about effects cats can have on the ecosystem, especially feral cats, is that they in particular spread toxoplasma Gandhi, which we had an entire episode on years and years and years ago.

But it's a type of parasite that can affect, that can create neurological symptoms in humans. It can, it's pretty rare that it actually does that, but it can cause birth defects in children in fetuses, which is why if you're pregnant, your advice to stay away from litter boxes or handling cat feces, you know, in general, which is just good advice generally because of toxoplasma. And it actually can kill other animals too, right? Oh, sure. And, you know, it spreads through those feces. So any warm-blooded, I mean, we, we can get infected, you know, humans can and do get toxoplasmosis. I'm sure I have toxoplasmosis by this point. Any warm-blooded animal can get it. And yeah, it can, it can kill animals as large

as a seal. Yes. And the reason why cats are so important into this chain is the, the T Gandhi eggs can only reproduce or the parasite can only reproduce in the gut of the cat. So if you take cats out of the equation, if you take cats that are roaming around the landscape pooping everywhere, you take toxoplasmosis out of the equation largely too. And then lastly, Chuck, one of the other things in addition to actually, you know, reeking havoc on bird and small mammal and also vertebrate or reptile and amphibian populations too, by directly eating them or killing them for sport, they're, they're having an indirect effect on some other native populations of like hawks, owls, larger mammals that eat these things for food. Like this is their food

that the cats are killing and eating in some cases or sometimes just killing. That's right. And we've talked a lot about the trickle down effect of removing anything from an ecosystem. And certainly birds are a vital part of any ecosystem, how they, you know, spread the seed and pollination. Like everything ends up being affected when you start extincting, extincting, sure, extincting birds. Sure. And so I know it sounds very much like we're teeing off on cats or not. That's not the point. The point is to kind of get across that what you think of is like a lovable cuddle bug of an animal actually does have negative impacts on the ecosystem. In particular, the ones that are feral, the ones that are unowned, the ones that

don't have a home to go to, the ones that, that it turns out we have zero idea of exactly how many there are, the feral cat populations. That's right. Should we take a break? Sure. All right. We'll take our second break here and we'll talk a little bit more about the problem in some solutions right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology,

but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So there are about 86 million pet cats in the United States. And I know I've talked about this before, about 25 to 30% of those cats are either full-time outdoor cats as your pet or you let your cat outside for large parts of the day or whatever, indoor outdoor cats. It's a problem. I don't think people should let their cats outside. I think if you have a pet cat, it should be an indoor only cat because of the lizards and the birds and the mammals that they kill because of the disease that they can spread. I've always been an indoor cat person since I've

been an adult. I grew up having outdoor cats and there was a constant flood of dead animals on our front porch all the time. And it was pretty horrifying as a kid to grow up with that kind of thing. But this is one of the situations where we don't like to get on our high horse very often, but you should keep your cats inside. And if not wanting to deal with a litter box is your issue, then you might want to rethink your why you have cats. Martha Stewart hawks one where like they send you a new fresh litter box every however long and then you just pack up the old one, throw it away. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it stinks. I hate cleaning out the litter box more than anything, but I love birds and chipmunks more than I hate

cleaning out the litter box. That's a really good way to put it, Chuck. Yeah. So that's just free roaming cats is what they're called, what you described. It's like they have a house to go to. They have people that feed them at that house. They're considered a pet, but they're allowed to run around the neighborhood as much as they like. So if we have about 86 million cats that are pets and 25 to 30 percent of them are roaming outdoors, that's a significant number. But from the censuses, the studies that have been conducted over decades, the feral cat population vastly seems to outnumber the free roaming cat population. Some studies say no, it's about the same maybe or probably a little more feral cats, maybe 30 million.

That is the lowest I've been able to come up with is 30 million. That's the lowest estimate I've seen across the entire internet. I went everywhere on the internet and the lowest I saw was 30 million. Some sources put it more in line with about the total number of pet cats, that there's about 80 million feral cats running around, again, the United States alone, just the U.S. Yes. And that if that is the case, then you really do start to get into some really big numbers really fast about how much of an effect those that 80 million feral cats could have on local bird and small mammal populations. Yeah. And if a feral cat makes it to adulthood, which like I said, the pretty high percentage died before six months of age, but if they do make

it to adulthood, they are very efficient killers and there are no natural predators for cats. And you might think, well, no, there's plenty of things that can kill a cat. There are, but their populations like a cougar or something, there aren't many of those left anymore. Those populations have been decimated because of all the reasons that that might happen. What you end up with is a lot of feral cats with nothing hunting them, but they're hunting everything else. Well, I found a 2013 Ohio State study and they found that urban coyotes, we did another episode on coyotes, remember, while as their numbers are growing and growing, they're actually keeping feral cat populations in check. Interesting. And as a result, some bird

species, small mammal species, their numbers are rebounding because urban coyotes tend to keep feral cats at bay, like feral cats avoid them like the plague. The thing is, coyotes tend to avoid humans. So the feral cats have just been hanging around buildings, offices, businesses, like human built areas and avoiding kind of more natural urban areas like woods and parks and tree forested areas, that kind of thing, where the coyotes hang out. So the wildlife is protected in the forested woody areas of a city, but they're prey around human habitation like buildings and offices and stuff. Right, which makes sense. So we've outlined the problem. It is really sad because I love cats and I don't like the idea of cats being a problem, but they are. So what are

the solutions? Gosh, what are the solutions? You're leaving that to me, huh? Yeah, we'll talk about it, but I'm teasing you up. So one of the solutions that, and this is, if you're a cat advocate and activist, you are probably very much in favor of a type of approach called trap neuter release, TNR programs. Right. These were developed, the earliest I saw was in the late 90s, where if you're a animal control, like for a county or a city or something like that, if you have a trap neuter release program, if you find a cat, you capture it, you take it to the shelter, their spaser neuters the cat, they clip the tip of the cat's ear off, and then you release it back into the wild, the feral cat. And as they're doing this, the point of trap neuter release

is that the cat is not euthanized. So it's an end to euthanasia as far as animal shelters. Like, you know, before trap neuter release, if a cat got picked up by animal control and made it to the animal shelter, that was it for the cat. This is a chance to give cats the opportunity to live their life out, but you've taken away their ability to reproduce. So you're now managing the reproduction rate of a feral cat colony. And if you get your hands on enough of these feral cats, and you spay in neuter enough of them, and you keep up with it fast enough, studies have shown that you have a really good chance of stabilizing and then eventually diminishing the feral cats in your area. Yeah. And there have been a lot of studies on this. It was one in 2019

that found over a decade. It's called high-intensity TNR. It was very successful at reducing feral cat populations. There's high density and low density TNR. And the idea, it seems to shake out, is that unless you are doing high density, unless you're hitting, unless you're getting to like 75% of the population, then they say you might as well not even be doing it. Right. So high intensity TNR really works. And then in this one study, it had a couple of other interesting parts to it, is they weren't just measuring how many feral cats are out there, but they're trying to do studies that like say, hey, we want healthy cat population. So let's look at harm reduction for feral cats. So if you have over a population and too many feral cats, then Ed points out,

there's a lot of misery going around. They struggle to find food more. They spread disease more. They are constantly pregnant. Cats reproduce like bunnies do. They can have up to three litters a year and up to 12 to 15 cats per litter. And these cats walking around, constantly pregnant, constantly giving birth to kittens that don't live more than six months, constantly looking for food because they're overstressed. If you're a cat lover again, that's not what you want. And so they tried to measure the harm reduction and they found that high intensity, I'm sorry, high intensity TNR reduced preventable cat deaths by 30% or 30 times. Yeah, 30 times, not 30%, 30 times fewer preventable cat deaths. And they defined

preventable cat deaths by cats that were picked up and euthanized at a shelter or cats that died before reaching adulthood. And cats have a really high mortality rate for young cats. I saw a study from 2003 or four that found a mortality rate of about 48% within three months of birth and 75% within six months of birth. And this is, you want to talk about harm reduction, the most common cause of death was trauma. So they were getting mauled by dogs or eagles or owls. Hit by cars. Yeah, getting hit by cars. So it is a really harsh, unhappy life for feral cats. And the premise of TNR is, okay, we can actually lead to a reduction in these kittens that are being born in these horrible conditions, living three months and then getting mauled by a neighborhood

owl or something like that. That's a bonus, that's a plus. But you hit on something that's really important, Chuck, that there is a pretty decent amount of research on, actually, that's not true. There's not that much research on the effectiveness of trap neuter release. But the studies that have been done on them that are high quality studies do emphasize that, no, there's definitely a threshold to where you're just completely wasting time and energy. And even worse than that, if you're not hitting, I think what did you say about the 75% threshold of spaying and neutering feral cats in a given colony, if you're not hitting that 75% mark, you're doing worse than nothing because the people who are aware of TNR, the TNR program

in your city and county think you're doing something, but not. It's worse than doing nothing because if everyone knows you're not doing anything, then people might say, we got to do something. But if they think you're doing something, but you're not actually really doing anything, that's harmful. And that's ultimately harmful, not just to these kittens that are being born by that like that, but also to the birds and small mammals that those kittens are eating within their three to six months on earth. That's right. TNR is expensive. It takes a lot of time. Trapping any animal is hard. Like one of our dogs, Charlie, we trapped. It was a feral dog in the woods. And it took five days to trap these dogs. It's a commitment to trap an animal.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You have a dog that you trapped that was feral? Yeah. Yeah, Charlie. I didn't know that. Yeah, Charlie. We found in the woods with four other dogs and just, you know, these dogs would not come near anybody when they were puppies. And we spent with our friends, Adair and Elliot spent, I think, yeah, like five days trying to trap these dogs. And Charlie was the last one that was holding out that we could not get. And a Burger King Cheeseburger is what finally did it. I'll do it every time. And Charlie spent the first, you know, as a result spent the first six years of her life very afraid of people and would just do rounders through our house when people would come over and not come near anybody. But since my daughter

came along, more people at the house and just over time, she's just the sweetest sweetest girl now goes up to everybody after like 20 seconds. And it used to take days or weeks. Oh, that's cool. It's a great success story there. But I have to say, Chuck, while you were describing tracking Charlie and her pals, I just imagined that music and that scene from Planet of the Apes where they're rounding up the humans with nets. Right. Is that basically what was going on? No, we had a big cage trap. Oh, gotcha. No nets on horseback? Yeah, like dog goes in to get food and then the door swings shut. But Charlie was very smart. And Charlie just turned 13. So. Oh, happy birthday. Great. But a long way of saying that trapping an

animal takes a lot of time and cats are super smart. And it's time consuming. It's expensive. And TNR is just, it's hard to get a lot of people rallying around it and funding it, especially if you're expecting like the county to fund it. Like most of that stuff is going to come from donations. Plus also, if you're a wildlife or conservation biologist, you might say, no, I don't want to do TNR at all. Like these cats, like let's say you pick one up at six months and you neuter it and release it into a feral colony. Most of those feral colonies are managed by the city or the county, meaning that they're fed, right, which ends up attracting more abandoned cats that haven't been neutered or spayed yet. And then worse than that, let's say these

cats live an extra four or five years. How many animals do they kill? Yeah, they're not reproducing, but you're releasing them back out to kill these birds and mammals. And those biologists say, this is too big of a problem to take up TNR programs. We need to do something else. Right. And everybody says, okay, well, what else? What can we do? And the biologists clear their throats and like kind of like put their hands in their pockets and look at one another and say like, who wants to say it? And the one who's on his phone, not paying attention, suddenly realizes everyone else is taking a step back and he's up. Oh boy. Oh, and that's me? Yep. Yeah, it's a terrible thing. But the other solution is that, you know, I don't even want

to say it, but it's killing cats. Australia does this pretty effectively. In 2016, they began using a poison. Here's the deal is cats probably won't eat poison. So they have these traps where a cat will go in and it will spray their fur with poison. The cats groom themselves by looking their fur. They ingest the poison and they die. And this is, you know, Ed points out, he's like, listen, this is no one cries for the dead rats and the dead mice, but you know, dead cats is you're going to get some public outrage. Yes, for sure. And there's, I mean, there's a lot that's mixed up with that one. You know, we've chosen cats. There's like only just a small handful of animals on the planet,

out of all the animals on the planet. There's such a select group that we've said, come live in our human world, our human culture. And cats are one of the top ones. I mean, like cats are pets. Coming to our house. Right. Yeah. Have my milk. And again, the cats like, please, this is really bad for me. I can't turn it away. Please stop tempting me. But that's a huge part of it. So like, even knowing that cats are out there having this huge effect on birds and mammals and like possibly creating species extinction, it's still like that doesn't just trigger something in us humans like, oh, well, then we got to get rid of cats. Right. That's just not, that's just not how it works. But that's what a lot of biologists suggest we do. And not

get rid of all cats, but, you know, get rid of feral cats, like get rid, do away with TNR programs and instead go back to, if you pick a cat up, you take it in and euthanize it and that's that. Because not only is it not reproducing any longer, it's also not killing small animals in the time where, between where it's picked up and spayed and neutered and then released back into the wild and then the time that it dies of whatever cause, you know. But again, how are you ever going to get anybody behind something like that? Do we even want to get behind something like that? And like, is that a thing that humans would want to take on? Like, okay, we've got this big problem. We need to handle it. If we handle it this way, we can probably handle it basically once and for

all. But is that something we want to do? Is that okay to do? Yeah, I mean, these are the big questions. I hope you're not looking to me for an answer. No, I mean, it's unfortunately, it's definitely rhetorical right now. I mean, some people would answer obviously one way or another. But I think there's a lot of people who are like, man, I really do care about birds and I really do care about chipmunks and biodiversity and I really don't like invasive species. Like, what am I to do? You know? Yeah. Well, at the very least, if you have outdoor cats, bring them inside. Yeah. And that's another thing too is one of the things that you would have to do part and parcel with this is, you know, in most cities and counties, you have to get a license to have

a dog. Right. You don't necessarily have to do that for a cat. You could start creating laws like that, create leash laws for cats, like really step it up and say, we love cats. You can have a cat, but you have to keep your cat in the house. If your cat's out of the house, you have to keep your cat on a leash. If a cat's feral, it's going to get picked up. So there's stuff you can do. It's just a question of will is what it is. Yeah. And you know, when I said that before, I got met with emails of, but my cat loves being outside. They all they do is want to be outside. It's because they want to go kill things. Yeah. Almost exclusively. Like, cats love to lay in the sunshine, but that's why you'll find them on sunny spots inside your house.

And those sunny spots are just fine. The cats want to go out and kill things. That's why they scratch at the door if you let them out once. And, you know, I know I'm fighting an uphill battle here, but I love cats and I hate the idea of running over a cat in my car. That's very traumatizing for an individual and a family. And the cat. Well, sure. So that's where I stand. Go ahead and email me if you're mad at me. So there's a group of vocal critics and opponents to the very people who produce these studies starting in 2013 and basically anybody who criticizes TNR programs who say that these studies that are getting all of this media exposure, they're based on like bad science. Their numbers are inflated. They're basically making all this

stuff up. One of the arguments that they make is that cats tend to prey on old or weak members of like bird or small mammal species that probably wouldn't have made it to reproduction time anyway. So they're not actually having an effect on the population. Come on. And there's answers to all these too that they've had. There's actually like, there's a flame war going on between this group of wildlife biologists and a specific group of like cat advocates. And they're like answering one another and calling one another out. But one of the answers to that is, well, okay, that's still, there's still animals that are suffering harm because cats are killing them. Even if they were going to die anyway, they're still being mauled by a cat. And then also,

what data are you basing that on that cats tend to kill infirm and weak members of species? Like, where did that come from? So each side in classic 2020s fashion is accusing the other of basically basing all their stuff on junk science, making things up, making kind of character attacks being snide to one another. It's just a beautifully 2020s argument. So it's interesting to read about, but then you step back and you think, this is really serious stuff. We need to do something. Everybody says we've got to do something, either a good T in our program or something, but we can't just keep going on like this. Yeah, because doing nothing creates again, colonies of feral cats that are not living their best life. Right.

You got anything else? No, not right now. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about cats as invasive species and in particular trap new to release programs, you can read all about that stuff all over the internet. There's a ton of it out there. And since I said there's a ton of it out there, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this green briar bunker addendum. We heard from a few people that have been there, taken the tour and had other interesting things to say. And this is from Greg Soster in Columbus, Ohio. Okay. Let me see here. Let me skip the beginning. In 1995, my family returned to the green briar. They'd previously been there in 1991. For a Christmas stay, the time, this time the bunker was known by the general public.

And we signed up for the guided tour. So I guess when they went in 1991, it was still not known as a thing. So they were those kind of shrouded in mystery at that point. Here we go. Number one, the back entrance also has an enormous blast doors with a very long haul leading to the under the mountain. A truck has to be able to drive in the air pressure when they close it is amazing. Other interesting rooms included dentist's office, a surgical operating room and a crematorium, a TV studio and a water purification plant. The answer, and we heard from quite a few people here, families do not go to the bunker. Each member of Congress has an assigned bunk and each bunk has their prescription medicines fully stocked

and spare prescription eyeglasses for everybody as well. Oh, that's such a great touch. Yeah, otherwise you got a 12 hour time. Glory of Vanderbilt. Right. Congress arrives by plane. There's a giant airstrip about 10 miles away and the army built a wide super highway from the airport straight to the bunker. A secret service would run drills to get the president to the bunker in 11 minutes or less. And then finally, it is strange to drive there because it is, it was windy and it was a two lane road and then suddenly the last 10 miles, it's like a race track. I remember joking to my wife that the Greenbrier had a heck of a driveway. So they're talking about the super highway that leads right to it. Right. And just to finish out, Greg says the entire

hotel staff in many townspeople knew about the secret for decades and they kept the secret out of a sense of duty and pride. They hated that when the secret was revealed by Mr. Ted Gupp because the national treasure was lost. That's pretty neat. So who is that from? That was from Greg in Columbus, Ohio. That's right. Thanks a lot, Greg. That was a good one. Appreciate that info. And if you want to be like Greg and send along some info to us, we'll try to sort through it from all the hate mail we're getting from cat lovers in the not too distant future. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to StuffPodcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts,

My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread

than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's to the great American settlers. The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because they pay the bills. Of course, there is something else you could do if you got something to say. Start a podcast with Spreaker from iHeart and unleash your creative

freedom. Maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your old boss, hey, I'm no settler, I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com, S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R. That's a lot over today.