Well sorry, but plain and simple I don't think joking about killing an animal is something an animal lover does.
I also still don't think you are going to encourage anyone to like snakes by threatening to feed cats to them (which is what he said he wanted to say to people who killed snakes). Either they are the sort of toerag who'll enjoy killing any animal, snake or cat, or they are not going to be any more impressed than me. Either way you aren't helping snakes.
This is suposed to be a thread about people things do at zoos that are annoying. The original point was about people being predjudiced against certain species. I agree with that. I find it disapointing that people who are up in arms about casual killing of one type of animal then turn round and make jokes about killing another.
I do think the Australian attitude to cats is often narrow minded and predjudiced. As I said before, the cats didn't get themselves to Australia. If there's a problem it's the fault of humans who brought them in, not the cats. And culling may well not be the answer. To restore the Australian ecosystem you'd need to remove every mouse, rat, rabbit, goat, pig and dog (including dingoes), and bring back the animals that have gone since man and dingo first arrived, including Tasmanian devil and thylocine. Few problems with that... Humans have cocked up royaly in Australia, and it doesn't matter how many cats you kill, the ecosystem is not going to be fully restored. It may well be that instead folks should be looking at creating the best possible balance. Even if you managed to remove all the cats, it's not impossible that doing that would cause an increase in mice, rats and rabbits in many places. It may well be that the best case scenario now will include cats.
Cats have been living feral in Tasmania for around 200 years. Yet Tasmania has had many more species survive than on the mainland. One factor seems to be that Tasmanian devils keep cat numbers in check. Unfortunately theoretically you don't get devils on the mainland because you have dingoes...
Also going further afield, in many places neutering has been found to better control cats than culling. It's also quite common for cats to be blamed for killing large numbers of small animals, when in fact loss of habitat to increasing human numbers and deaths on roads are much larger factor. In any just about any ecosystem (an exception being small islands, where cats can indeed be devastating...) you'll find that small critters get killed in large numbers by something. It may be cats, it may be something else, it may be that cats take over the role when something else gets pushed out due to human activity. Here in the UK small criters probably used to get killed in huge numbers by stoats, pine martens, birds of prey and wildcats. Human activty has reduced all of those. Domestic cats are not killing anything that wasn't always killed in huge numbers. The difference is loss of habitats. (I do support cat owners taking action to minimise cat's hunting: the point is, as often is the case, the problem is really humans not cats)
I am prepared to accept that culling may sometimes be an answer. However there doesn't seem to be any sign that it's working in Australia. I think it is narrow minded not to consider that other strategies need to be tried. If you ask me it's human activity that should be focused on: maybe working towards reduced population, certainly stopping land being turned over to building etc. But it's always easier to blame a cat, rather than tell your neighbour that they shouldn't be building that new housing estate in the middle of a forest. And if killing cats doesn't work, politicians can always say they'll kill more next year.
