Second, there is a sheer numbers issue at play here.
If this happened only relatively recently, it would make the cat’s impact on native wildlife ‘fresh’, certainly on the slower time-scale relevant for ecology and of evolution. First, we don’t know how long ago feral cat populations – with their larger impact on native animals – became established in Cyprus. However, there are two points I think are worth stressing in this context. The cat is, as already stated, not a new arrival to Cyprus, and some introduced species come to fall into the ‘naturalised’ rather than ‘invasive’ category, with a balance apparently found with native species. Ecological havoc can, and often does, ensue. Plants – such as Acacias or the Bermuda Buttercup in Cyprus – can be serious invasive pests, and so can animals, especially predators, which take advantage of the fact that native prey have not evolved suitable defences. A small but dangerous proportion of these introductions become established in local ecosystems, gain ground and become invasive, wiping out native species. Throwing off the ecological balance carved out by species that have mostly co-existed for millennia by suddenly chucking new species into the ‘mix’, is something we humans are very fond of doing, as we transfer species across the globe, either by accident or deliberately.
#Buttercup cafe drivers
Invasive species are recognised as one of the big drivers of the global biodiversity crisis, part of the ‘deadly five’ along with habitat loss and degradation, over-exploitation, pollution and Climate Change. On small islands in particular, free-ranging cats have caused or contributed to 33 modern-era extinctions of birds, mammals and reptiles, as reported in a review of the issue in top scientific journal Nature (Loss, Will & Marra, 2012). Globally, cats are recognised as among the top 100 worst non-native invasive species. The evidence is that however well-fed a house cat might be, it will still hunt, especially if allowed out by night. This translates into a large predation pressure on wildlife, be this reptiles, amphibians, mammals or birds. Owned and unowned cats sum up to a very large population of non-native (as in introduced) predators in our towns and countryside. Even though these ‘cat hotels’ often involve neutering programmes – a very wise move – cat numbers seem to grow steadily at such feeding points. Especially in recent years, a large and growing number of ‘feeding stations’ have sprung up across Cyprus, in parks and elsewhere, where well-meaning humans put out food and provide makeshift shelters for stray cats.
So cats are no ‘new arrival’ to Cyprus, and they have certainly made themselves at home.Ĭats are enduringly popular pets but have also always ended up as strays, abandoned by their owners to turn feral, or in some cases to end up as something in-between, strays that are fed by humans. Indeed there is evidence that it is the cat’s abilities in snake, rat and mouse control that led to its domestication by man, many millennia ago.Īrchaeologists have identified evidence of cats as pets in Cyprus – in the shape of cat remains laid alongside a human skeleton in a grave – dating back some 9,500 years. For cats Felis catus are very effective killers of not just snakes and other reptiles, but also of amphibians, rodents and birds.
These tales – for that is what the archaeological evidence suggest they are – indicate these great women of old knew a thing or two about predation. Or maybe it was Queen Cleopatra of Egypt who initiated the ‘feline ferry express’, about 250 years earlier and with a similar goal in mind. Legend has it that Agia Eleni (aka Roman Empress Saint Helena) had the island’s first cats brought over by boat from Egypt about 1,800 years ago, in a ‘snake-bashing’ bid.
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