Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/19/eat-or-toss-a-nutria-rat-at-the-nutria-rodeo.html
…
3 Likes
Yeah okay, is cruelty glorifying hunting (for sports) with added carcass horseplay really the look you’re going for these days, BB?
Housecats are an invasive species, too, in most parts of the world, and massively threaten native species. Would night time kill squads for those also fall under “ethical hunting”?
5 Likes
Well I certainly hope that some meaningful good comes as a result of this hunt, but the numbers are daunting. Google tells me that there are approximately 25,000,000 of these guys in Louisiana alone. The rodeo website says that the last hunt netted less than 2,000 of them, so less than .008% of the estimated population. And these guys can birth 3 litters per year, so they repopulate very quickly.
2 Likes
“Eat or toss nutria rats at the Nutria rodeo!”
What’s a nutria rat? That article title confused me for a few seconds until I realized it should say “Eat or toss rats to nutria…”. 
Edit: Peeps have pointed out that their proper name is “nutria rats”, and of course I was pretty sure nutria were herbivorous so feeding them rats should have got my Spidey-sense tingling.
1 Like
No, it means nutria rats. It’s a type of rat.
5 Likes
the animal is called nutria (mostly in North America). Calling it ‘nutria rat’ is arguably just as redundant as calling a coyote a ‘coyote dog’, for example.
2 Likes
It’s not for sport, it’s for pest/invasive species control. The fact that you CAN eat them, should be a bonus for people looking for free meat. I have never had nutria so I have no idea how much of an uphill battle that is.
The dead rat toss is a little macabre, but you have to understand how bad invasive species are on local ecosystems. They are a scourge that is destroying local habitat and local populations.
Absolutely feral cats need to be culled in some locations. New Zealand, Australia, and Hawaii have had feral cat culls to protect their endangered bird species.
Look, I love pets and I like animals in general, but if you don’t have a balance then species go extinct or have their ranges reduced. There are so many example of plants and animals where “God didn’t put them” (as my dad would say) that are killing through predation or out competing native species.
Yeah, it is an uphill battle. I doubt you can ever eradicate them, but you might be able to contain them.
I read an article on pythons in Florida, and holy hell. These snakes are so good a hiding even the ones they have trackers on they can’t find sometimes. And they just devour anything they can fit in their mouths. 
Ironically they would help keep the Nutria population down, but introducing them to Louisiana isn’t the answer. (I am sure they have some down there too!)
Another invasive species stories is Grey Squirrels pushing out native Red Squirrels in the UK. The grey ones have a higher tolerance for tannins than the red ones, so they can eat acorns sooner than the reds. Imported in the 19th century from North America for gardens, they quickly spread with the help of humans, hitching rides on cars and such.
3 Likes
While they are rodents, nobody calls them “nutria rats” - they’re just nutria.
It’s not nutria rats, but Rodents of Unusal Size is a documentary about massive, 20-pound swamp rats.
That documentary is about nutria, which are technically 20-pound swamp rats, but again, people just call them nutria.
1 Like
Thank you for the edification fellow internet enthusiast!
1 Like
Correct, but they are a type of rat, not just a rodent. Specifically, they’re in the family of spiny rats. And their taxonomic name, Myocaster, literally translates as mouse beaver. Which I find kind of hilarious.
5 Likes
As Elaine learned the hard way on Seinfeld.
4 Likes
It is hunting for sports though. There’s a competition: who kills the most gets a prize, who kills the biggest gets a prize. Hence, it is likely, when speed is concerned, careful hunting practices and considerations for the humane treatment of the animal will always play second chair. Ask the meatpacking industry if that’s not 100% the case.
Feral cats don’t have to be “culled”. They could certainly be caught, neutered, and re-released in a safe -for them and other species- different environment.
“Pest control” is carefully selecting a mouse trap or insecticide that’s right for your need. Exploitation is to make a Youtube channel out of it and come up with wackier and wackier contraptions every week to catapult mice over the house.
1 Like
Everything I know about nutria I learned from an episode of Dirty Jobs, where host Mike Rowe rode along one night with a county worker plinking nutria with a .22 from the back of a pickup truck. Just driving down some neighborhood street, middle of the night, backlit by a gas station. The driver stops, they shine a light on a small creature in a drainage ditch, then pops off a shot.
The “dirty” part of the job was wading into the ditch at midnight to retrieve the dead rats; but the real threat was the likelihood of gators living in that same section of ditch.
3 Likes
In some areas the catch-spay/neuter-release makes sense.
In places like Hawaii and New Zealand, it doesn’t. You aren’t going to ship feral cats thousands of miles away to a place that already has its fair share. And you can’t let them back in the environment because they are killing endangered birds and rodents.
2 Likes
Be that as it may,
it is still done in an unprofessional, needlessly bloodthirsty and sensationalizing manner, and surely only a fraction of these animals get butchered and eaten (Not the ones that get slammed into the pavement many times, me thinks).
I don’t know if we’d be far off if - instead - we lauded the cultural and ecological virtues of seal clubbing.
Or, and that was the intent of my original taunt, if we excused random locals getting together at night to bow hunt stray cats, with the promise that they were all threats to local ecology, and that some of them will get butchered and eaten (and went so far as to call this ‘ethical hunting’.) (and maybe gave a pat on the back and a novelty cheque to the jovial chap who drags the most carcasses to City Hall the next morning.)
3 Likes
People in south Louisiana definitely call them nutria rats, so not sure what you’re on about.
1 Like
I still don’t get how this entry’s author chooses to consistently post depressing things on a “mostly wonderful things“ blog. Normally I just ignore them, but this one and it’s “animal carcass tossing” content is downright barbaric.
3 Likes
Invasive species or not, this article seems to be glorifying sadistic behavior.
Honest question: what kind of environment could a feral cat be re-released into that’s safe for other species? They’re predators, after all. And not all feral cats are appropriate for adoption into indoor-only homes.
They would just have to live with - and in sanctuary organisations where there’s a habitat for them. One that’s fenced in, where they are fed so that they don’t want to break out and roam, and where they are far away from vulnerable species such as ground nesting birds.
Hence, with spaying/neutering, they could be “re-conditioned” (not sure what word to use) for indoor life adoption, or if they’re too sick/old/feral/predatory, managed and left to live out their days.
As I was now reading about this -and for the American realm - this place in Hawai’i came up a few times: Hawai'i's Lanai Cat Sanctuary Also Helps to Protect Endangered Birds
1 Like
