Cats & the environment

It is a true New York Times story that involves issues of conservation substance. In Texas, a Jim Stevenson shot a feral cat that was attacking an endangered bird species – the Piping plover. Feral cats are among the most destructive animals in the natural environment. Stevenson was put on trial with some competing groups baying for blood (the cat lovers see it as ‘natural’ for cats to kill birds) and others seeing him as a heroic defender of the natural environment. Finally, the jury reflected the complex mix of moral issues here and could not agree on a verdict - he was acquitted.

I don't dislike cats on an individual level and recognise the great pleasure they bring people. Generally I am interested in pets that live with humans. Recent economic theory extends models of the household to include pets – which are treated as complementary or substitute inputs into the services provided by households. In Australia we spend huge amounts on pets. We have about 2.4 million domestic cats and far more than that are feral – unlike children people routinely buy and then dump pets that are unwanted.

Some identify positive benefits on people from owning pets are claimed to arise in the form of biophilia or ‘biological fitness’ benefits from an association with non-human life. Of course one can enjoy nature and non-human life without keeping pets.

But I do have specific problems with cats that are not constrained, by being kept inside a house or on a leash, from killing native wildlife. I recognise that restraining them limits their welfare and perhaps that of their owners but because I place weight on the natural environment I can live with that. The positive benefits that can be gained from having pets can then be gained without imposing negative external costs on the environment.

(Parenthetically I also have problems with dogs inside a house – the pervasive doggy smell that runs through carpets and furnishings puts me off.)

It is however very difficult to rid the environment of feral cats and indeed foxes. In fact shooting them is not very effective since – like foxes – they bread prolifically. A few crushed aspirin tablets mixed with tuna fish will kill unwanted cats in bushland or your backyard but, of course, approach any known owners with concerns, before you employ such solutions.

There is some limited work on the biodiversity effects on cats in Australia. A longer report is here. Everyday observation confirms that they are, in close competition with foxes, one of our most destructive environmental forces. This motivates my preference for trying to introduce nature as a part of our urban environments and to enjoy this rather than to keep environmentally destructive pets that cost society so much in private costs and external costs to the environment.

Pets

As I have suggested before it is reasonable to suppose that economists should view animals kept as pets as an economically important part of the family unit. There are health, companionship and perhaps even biophilia benefits from owning pets. I have had pets myself in the past (dogs, cats, fish) but don’t do so now mainly because of my busy lifestyle and concerns about environmental implications. Others obviously get a lot of pleasure from owning pets – I prefer observing free-ranging, wild animals.

On conventional pets The Age today writes:

‘Australia has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world, even though dog and cat populations have declined recently. About 38 million dogs, cats, fish, birds and other pets live domesticated lives. Birds and fish make up 29 million of these, and there are 3.7 million dogs and 2.4 million cats.

The pet food industry, worth more than $2 billion a year, is dominated by multinational companies. The key pet food makers include giants such as Mars Petcare and Nestle Purina.'

I posted a while back on the US pet industry but I had no data for Australia. The Age this morning cites some – not in the link they provide on their website but it is there in the hard copy. The data comes from an industry group the Australian Companion Animal Council which has an excellent website:

• Australians spend $4.6 billion per year on pets and the pet industry employ 44,000 people.
• Expenditure on pet food is $1.9 billion per year.
• 63% of households own a pet with 53% owning a cat or a dog – although there have been longer-term declines in these proportions particularly with respect to cat ownership.
  

A report by BIS Shrapnel, Contribution of the Pet Care Industry to the Australian Economy, 2006 provides more information including international comparisons with the US and UK – both big pet owning countries – and information on newer types of pets being kept such as native species and particularly reptiles.

Pets are a significant part of the Australian economy and a significant extension of the conventional idea of a household. There is evidence pets are a substitute for having children and are often not kept when young children are young but treated as complementary household input when children are older.

Pets as part of the household

I recently posted on some descriptive aspects of pet ownership in the US - the claim was that $41 billion was now spent of pets. A study by Schwartz, Troyer and Walker (STW) looks at more economic, analytical aspects of the issue - they seek to embed pets in a theory of the household that includes children as substitute or complementary goods. STW claim the number of US households with pets increased from 52 million to 69 million from1988-2002. The 2002 total included an estimated 65 million dogs and 78 million cats, comparable in magnitude to census estimates of 72 million children under the age of 18.

Pet spending in the US increased at a faster rate, from $17 billion in 1994 to $34 billion by 2004. Pets have been gaining attention, with the press taking note almost daily of the latest pet-related business trends, such as pet insurance, day care, and pet-friendly hotels. My earlier post also comments on these issues.

Health professions have been giving attention to the physical and mental health benefits of pet ownership. But STW note pets have hardly been touched in any formal economic analysis even though the fastest growing segments of pet owners are empty nesters and young professionals who postpone starting families but want a substitute, suggesting parallels with the economics of the household. There are differences between pets and children. It is legal to purchase pets but not children, unwanted pets can be abandoned and pets cannot provide for parents in their old age. Single or gay people can have a pet without any social stigma!

STW support a model of the family that includes pets and children, allowing for substitutability and complementarity between the two. Increasing the number of children reduces pet spending in married households, suggesting that children and pets are substitutes. However, households with young children are less likely to own pets, while families with older children are more likely to own pets. Hence pets are viewed as a substitutes for very young children and complements with older children.

Positive income elasticities show that pets are a normal necessity goods with women in married households having smaller income elasticities for pet expenditures than do men. This is the opposite of what has been found for women and men with regard to expenditures on children.

I assume the same sorts of trends hold iin Australia. I would be interested if there was any data out there at all.

The pet economy & biophilia

I could barely believe parts of this story. According to this week's Business Week Americans spend $41 billion on their pets which is more than the GDP of all but 64 countries. This is mainly spent on 88 million cats and 75 million dogs. Pets increasingly substitute for human companionship – 42% of dogs now sleep on the same bed as their owners.

The issue of whether things are getting out of hand is firmly resolved by the existence of Neuticles, ‘ a patented testicular implant that sells for up to $919 a pair. The idea, says inventor Gregg A. Miller, is to "let people restore their pets to anatomical preciseness" after neutering, thereby allowing them to retain their natural look and self-esteem. ... "Neutering is creepy. But with Neuticles, it's like nothing has changed." Nothing, except there's a fake body part where a real one used to be.

I don’t have data on the Australian expenditures (I'd be interested if anyone has any!) but notice that nearly a whole isle of most modern supermarkets is taken up with animal feeds and a high proportion of Australian households have that 'wet doggie' odor in their living rooms.

My personal preference is to scrap the high opportunity cost of maintaining enormous cat, dog and caged bird populations and invest the lot in restoring and conserving native biodiversity.

We need non-human life and nature for our survival as a species and to make our lives more pleasant, attractive and interesting. Some have even conjectured that being surrounded by nature improves human genetic fitness.

Edward Wilson advanced the biophilia hypothesis that humans have an ‘innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes”. There is seen to be a human dependence or need for nature that extends far beyond needs for material sustenance to encompass, as well, human cravings for aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual meaning and sustenance. Biophilia is seen to be:

• Biologically-based and inherent. Evolution has produced genetically based responses to biological and other environmental phenomena.
• Associated with long-term human competitive advantage, genetic fitness.
• Associated with current possibilities for enhancing personal achievement.
• A self-interested basis for conservation of biodiversity.

These ideas are difficult-to-test and suggest biophilia might be an attempt to ‘promote a romantic idealization of nature’ (Kellert & Wilson (1997)). In this sense biophilia might be a reaction to anxieties generated by technological and political change. As a rationale for conservation and respect for nature, biophilia is essentially utilitarian.

This general demand for nature might in part explain the specific demand for pets - its biophilia accompanied by the need to live in large cities where nature is almost eliminated.

Kellert & Wilson examine theoretical and empirical evidence to support biophilia. They portray biophilia as a set of learning rules that fall along various instinctive spectra from attraction to aversion (biophobia), from awe to indifference but that are driven by millions of years of evolutionary logic. For example, the constant exposure through evolutionary time to the malign influence of snakes results in an aversion to but fascination with snakes. Wilson suggests we do not need to rely on Freudian theory to account for this fascination. Large numbers of such influences combine to help establish human identity and personal fulfillment.

There is some experimental, and other, evidence supporting this view. Some of this evidence relates to the way we learn to be averse or to favor certain natural experiences (animal or landscape). Further evidence includes the large demands for ‘pets’ in industrial societies as discussed.

Habitat selection can be understood as a biophilic response. It answers the question what is a ‘good place’? This can be reflected in landscape aesthetics and experimentally through the effects of natural settings (or paintings of such or aquaria) in reducing stress and even improving health and creativity.

There is even evidence that positive attitudes to nature indicate lack of conduct disorders in children. Certainly children seem to learn much about the world through species recognition. Thus the principal nouns of interest to small children are body parts and animals.

Adults see animals as important symbols: the honeybee (‘wisdom and sensitivity’), the pig (‘lustful and lazy’) and the bat (‘denizens of the underworld’). This is important because information is processed by means of symbols.

Evidence on the behaviour of hunters is also relevant since, as anthropologists point out, for most of human history humans have been hunter gathers. This evidence suggests both intense knowledge and respect for nature as a whole coupled with a (sometimes) savage utilitarianism.

All of these types of values might need to be accounted for in valuing the potential destruction of nature. There seems however to be no evidence that responding positively to nature has a partly genetic basis.

I get positive benefits from enjoying living in natural surroundings and observing nature. The benefits are amplified if occasionally I can do this alone - I find my own company wonderful at times - where I can, without inhibition, allow my curiosity to roam. I don’t want or need dogs, cats or caged birds to be my 'friends' or to get a sense of nature and/or a biophilia blast.