I don't think anyone is saying the country side is crawling with cats that
look like Samurai Wrestlers, but there are certainly some very big one out
there.
Why do cats and all animals fight ??? because it is the nature of the
beast that the biggest and the superior male keeps the bloodline going
,hence the
resulting offspring are bigger than normal and when there is an abundance
of food the big get bigger.
The biggest male lion controls the pride, the biggest Roo controls the mob
etc. there is a hierarchy system in most wild animals etc.
There are millions of cats that would barely weigh 3 to 4 kg but there are
many well above that and many on record weighing 7 and 8 kg.
The problem is not just a recent event but revolves around the plagues of
Long-haired Native Rat which appear from time to time with an explosion of
breeding
by Cats, Foxes, Dingoes, Raptures, Snakes, Goannas etc which gorge
themselves on the rats and breed many times more a year than normal times.
Countless Barn Owls breed in the Cloncurry to Blackall districts and were
killed on the roads at night.
The recent plague I am told started in the South West of Qld and spread to
Northern N S W and S. A. and then North and West across into the N.T. and up
through Birdsville,
Bedourie, Boulia ,East to Blackall, and Winton right through the Mitchell
Grass and Spinifex country and eventually to Alice Springs and the Barkly
Tablelands, North to as far
as Mt Isa and Lawn Hill with the cats, raptures etc following.
I rarely saw a Letter-winged Kite when going down the Strzelecki Track in
2009 but when camping there a year later there were a lot of Letter-winged
and Raptures nesting
along the track and rats would come around the camp at night right up to
your feet and crawl over you if you if you were sleeping in a swag only. ( I
had to buy a tent )
They are not a vicious rat but would chew into any food left lying around,
and chew anything leather, plus the elec. wiring on cars etc
As the rat plague ran it natural course and they died out the cats turned to
alternative food sources which included the native animals and birds as
there were very few
rabbits left in this type of country.
In 1992 there was a survey done on a S. W. of Qld cattle station where 175
cats were shot by the survey group and the Army shot another 400 in three
days in a 10 sqr km area.
This caused a vacuum and others moved in and the army returned two weeks
later and shot another 200 in the same control area.
It is not a new problem but has got a lot worse with the amount of road kill
in some area the cats are not dying out as they have done before.
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