Rats and cats

If you could save either a rat or a cat, which one would you pick?  Suppose I told you the rat in question was a Gambian pouched rat, almost three feet from nose to tail, trained to detect land mines by scent.  Thirty-nine of these trained rats are at work in Angola, and they are far better at clearing mine fields than people with metal detectors, since the metal detectors detect any metal, including rusty nails, while the rats only home on mines.

In the future the rats may also be trained to detect tuberculosis.  In early tests the rats are more accurate and much faster than humans with microscopes.

Now let’s go to New York’s Jones Beach State Park, where nesting plovers, an endangered species in New York, are threatened by a colony of feral cats, cared for by cat lovers who oppose any effort to kill them.  Are the cats endangered?  No.  Do the feral cat lovers understand that protecting a threatened species may necessitate the killing of feral cats?  Obviously not.   Sentiment gets in the way of common sense and science.

I personally like cats.  I’ve been a cat owner.  Nonetheless, I understand that feral cats are not part of the natural world, do immense damage, and need to be eliminated.  And people need to understand that.

Information for this screed was taken from “The Giant Rats That Save Lives” by Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, (Apr. 19, 2015), p. SR1, 11; and “At a Long Island Beach, Human Tempers Flare Over Claws and Feathers,” New York Times, (April. 18, 2015), p. A17.  The opinion on feral cats is my own.