Around the tolerant British dining table, there are few opinions which will see you shunned, instantly. ‘Bring back the birch’ might be one, unless you’re supping with someone who recently had a bike stolen. ‘Xi Jinping has really good hair’ will certainly silence people. However if you say ‘keeping pets is usually wrong, especially cats and dogs’, I can guarantee universal rejection.
Still, the point needs to be repeated – not least because we have new, disturbing evidence of the damage these pets are doing: to the environment.
Fluffy may not look like an ecological supervillain, but I am afraid it is the case
That evidence comes in the ongoing collapse in British insect life. This terrible decline has been recorded in multiple ways, as Britain is a country densely populated with the type of people who notice this stuff: from amateur nature-watchers, to worried zoologists, to contrarian petrolhead-turned-hobby-farmer Jeremy Clarkson – who recently noted: ‘Just been for a walk round the farm and I’m a bit alarmed by how few butterflies there are. Something is afoot.’
If you won’t take the word of ex-Top Gear presenters, try the bleak numbers from Britain’s top bug boffins. Ecologist Richard Fox, chief scientist at the Big Butterfly Count (which assesses the health of UK butterflies every year), says ‘there seems to be relatively few butterflies around’, and his data supports this: 2024 might be the worst year on record for butterflies.
The government concurs. Long-running official studies show that 80 per cent of butterfly species in Britain have seen a decline since the 1970s. Half of butterfly species are threatened with extinction, to various degrees.
And it’s not just butterflies: similar UK government data says that of almost 400 bee and hoverfly species, 42 per cent have become less abundant since the 1980s. Another citizen science endeavour has found a 60 per cent decline in ‘flying insects’ between 2004 and 2021. Looking at a wider definition of bugs, below ground is no better: in Britain (as elsewhere) earthworm populations are down by a third in 25 years.
You don’t have to be a green-haired Green to comprehend how calamitous a collapse in insect life would be: for us, and for the world. Insects are the foundation of the planetary ecosystem: bees pollinate our flowers, fruits and orchards, without them we could starve. Indeed all forms of larger life, birds to reptiles to the ring-tailed lemur, ultimately depend on insect life supporting and linking the global food chain.
What is causing this ominous decline? Obvious culprits spring to mind. The loss of insect-friendly habitats around the world plays a significant role: e.g. mosquitoes breed in standing water, expanding cities eradicate these things. Climate change is another villain: too much rain, too little rain – any persistent change in the weather can be deleterious for insect life. Yes, they may adapt (there is evidence that a few butterfly species, which prefer warmer but wetter weather, are spreading north through the UK) but that adaptation will be painful, perilous, and a positive outcome is far from assured.
Then we come to Fluffy, purring on your lap (or Charlie and Max, right now begging for a biccie). Fluffy may not look like an ecological supervillain, but I am afraid it is the case. And I’m not talking about the depredations cats inflict on British wildlife – though these are truly disturbing, with the UK’s domestic cats slaughtering up to 270 million smaller creatures every year, including 50 million birds.
I’m talking about the topical medicines so many people apply to Britain’s 11 million pet cats and 12 million pet dogs, to ward off ticks and fleas. A large, growing body of studies (the latest emerging from Imperial College) shows that these parasiticides are quite devastating once they reach the wider world.
This should not come as a surprise, because these parasiticides generally contain chemicals, such as imidacloprid, which are so toxic for the environment they have been banned for agricultural use. These chemicals are, after all, expressly designed to kill insects – small amounts can eliminate bees by the million. And yet – due to bureaucratic oversight, or too many dog-lovers in office – we blithely allow these hideous poisons for widespread use as pet treatments.
The result is that the via the shedding of pet hair, the tendency of pets to urinate, the interaction of pets with the great outdoors, even the hands of pet-owners covered with these chemicals, these insecticidal toxins leach into our ecosystem. Especially our streams and rivers.
A recent edition of BBC’s Springwatch did a simple but vivid experiment on a northern English river to show the impact. The virgin river, unaffected by these chemicals, was alive with bugs. Lower down, where the pet meds had infiltrated, the bugs were struggling. Or non-existent. If you want this in more technical language: see here.
Perhaps, by this point, sensitive dog-or-cat-owning Spectator readers are thinking: well, maybe we can find environmentally kinder medications? And maybe we can, but we need to be asking a deeper question. Why do we need all these pets anyway? Isn’t it an act of great selfishness, to enslave a highly sentient mammal (often taking it from its parents very young) and keep it solely for our entertainment, depriving it of natural purpose, and dignity, and often its reproductive organs?
For many people, addicted to the emotional and physical fun that pets undoubtedly provide, and convinced that their dog is supremely happy (spoiler: they often aren’t) and firmly of the belief that their cat doesn’t murder songbirds by the ton (spoiler: it does) this is a difficult dilemma. One from which we turn away. Walkies!
But the time has come when we need to face up to the pet-unfriendly facts. Domestic pets are catastrophic for wildlife, for ecosystems, and for children that get their legs chewed off by killer hounds. Generally, we do not need them (soon even the loneliest labrador-lover will be able to get company from AI). Keeping pets is often, in essence, no better than visiting those old-fashioned chimpanzee tea parties at circuses, which we now view with abhorrence.
I predict that in a hundred years we will look back on a lot of cat and dog-owning with similar disdain. Pet-owning – absent a deeper purpose, as with sheep-dogs or guide-dogs – will be viewed as a bizarrely cruel spectacle that persisted way too long, like child labour, or Strictly Ballroom. So maybe it’s time to get ahead of the curve. It’s time, my kitty-loving friends, to chuck Fluffy.
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