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Lies, Damned Lies and Cat Statistics
spopepro writes "While un-captioned cats might be of limited interest to the /. community, I found this column on how a fabricated statistic takes on a life of its own interesting. Starting with the Humane Society of the United States' (HSUS) claim that the unsterilized offspring of a cat will '...result in 420,000 cats in 5 years,' the author looks at other erroneous numbers, where they came from and why they won't go away."
Reminds me of the following: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/21/if-i-hadnt-killed-52-flies-as-a-child-how-many-descendants-would-they-have-had-by-now
Age to maturity: 6 to 10 months
Litters per year: 0 to 3
Litter size: 1 to 8
so, using a changing multipler for newborns of
year1= 0 to 12 offspring
year2,3,4,5 = 0 to 24 offspring
i get values around
end year1: 1 to 25 cats
end year2: 1 to 300 cats
end year3: 1 to 3900 cats
end year4: 1 to 54k cats
end year5: 1 to 835k cats
So it pretty much stands as a useless range
Right, and 5/4 people have trouble with fractions....
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
I should derive a bullshit statistic on how many Pulitzer prize winners don't know the difference between the plural "women" and the singular "woman", though I'm pretty sure it is Christie Keith's own error in failing to accurately quote her. Either that, or her editor is an idiot or a dyslexic that hasn't learned to overcome his/her disability.
"And when all the programs on all the channels actually were made by actors with cleft palates, speaking lines by dyslexic writers, filmed by blind cameramen, instead of merely seeming like that, it somehow made the whole thing more worthwhile." -- Douglas Adams, radio play 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' (Fit the Eleventh)
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
For your future knowledge, it is 1-in-5 not 1-in-4. I would consider those to be almost the same. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00049859.htm "Female students (20.4%) were significantly more likely than male students (3.9%) to report they had ever been forced to have sexual intercourse."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ms. Keith is a for-profit breeder. Along with constantly complaining about any sort of law or regulation on the unfettered ability of animals to procreate (whihc would, of course, impact her own bottom line), she loves to rail against pet vaccinations. I do get a kick out of her opening sentence about how she walked out of the house and didn't see any cats. Feral cats actively hide from humans, you fucking moron.
A healthy female cat is going to have a littler every year. A litter is going to be greater than one cat, guaranteed.
The low end of your range is thus not realistic.
To give only the upper end of that range is misleading but not as bad as your range, which hides a real problem by saying that there may not be one.
What you should really do is use an average figure as a base, which is four cats per littler (of course for the purposes of growth you would use something like half that number to account for only the female cats producing offspring).
Also cats can have up to four litters per year. Winter is actually not much of an impediment in urban areas where cats can readily find warm spaces.
So you get something more like:
year 1 - 12 cats, six female. (assuming 3 litters on average with four cats each)
year 2 - 72 new cats, 42 female (leaving in previous female cats)
year 3 - 504 new cats, 294 breeding females
year 4 - 3528 new cats, 2052 breeding females (assumed first six are dead now).
year 5 - 24k cats
The problem is not on the same order of magnitude as the high end, but is probably a realistic model of feral cat population growth. The reality is that in urban environments feral cats really are everywhere. The truth is that controlling feral cat populations does make an impact, if nothing else it helps out other species like birds that cats hunt.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"A really feral cat CANNOT be made a pet. If you get them really, really early as kittens (a few weeks old) you can, but after that - forget it."
WRONG! I know this from personal experience. I live in the country and we have feral cats and encourage them to keep the rodent population down. While some never lose the "wild" streak, some are quite happy to enjoy the company of humans if you take your time with them and earn their trust. I have had feral cats that after a few months let me pick them up and LOVED attention. And yes, I DO know the difference between a feral cat and a stray cat. It's more about the disposition of the cat and you're ability to earn their trust.
Disease is the big killer. We have coyotes and other predators all around but the cats are very good at avoiding them. The diseases will typically kill 50 - 100% of a litter without any treatments. Cars get a few even on country roads... in more populated areas I'm sure the numbers rise. Really only about 1 or 2 / litter usually survive, if that...