Hey Thoughty2 here. The honey bee is one of the most incredible
creatures on planet Earth. Each worker bee grafts tirelessly its entire
lifetime to create just 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. So when you put honey on your toast in the
morning you are eating the entire lifetime achievements of around 40 bees. Bees can communicate with each other with
incredible accuracy, via the medium of dance. Bees have various dances to tell other hive
members where the best, nectar-rich flowers are located. Through these waggle dances they can convey
information such as distance, direction, the angle of the flowers relative to the sun and
even how good the flowers are. Bee pollination is crucial to the survival
of mankind. The activities of bees nurtures the crops
we humans live off. In fact over one-third of all food you find
in the supermarket requires bee pollination to exist. If there were no bees, 33% of all foods you
know would be no more. And over 90% of the world's plants require
bees. Over the past decade there has been an awful
lot of talk about saving the honey bees. And you may have heard that the honey bee
has been put onto the endangered species list. But this is simply a case of misinformation
being virally spread around the internet as it often is. Truth is, the honey bee is absolutely fine,
there is nothing to worry about. In fact, since 2006 the honey bee population
has increased year-on-year. It's true that if the honey bee population
drastically decreased it could cause a total ecosystem breakdown and the end of the human
race, a terrifying thought. But with hundreds of thousands of private
bee keepers worldwide the chances of honey bees becoming endangered are basically non-existent. So what was all the panic about? The only bees that were identified as endangered
were a tiny handful of obscure bee species that are endemic to Hawaii. So unless you happen to live in Hawaii, the
bees you see buzzing around you every day, happily pollinating plants and making honey
are going absolutely nowhere. But there is an extremely common animal that
poses an even greater threat to the survival of mankind than the honey bee. An animal that is the universal mascot of
the internet. The internet's court jester, the cat. It may have provided you with countless lols,
and you should be very thankful it has, because if the cat were to become extinct it would
likely be the end of the human race. Cats are members of a family of carnivores
called felidae, which includes tigers, cougars and cheetahs. And like their distant cousins, cats have
sharp retractable claws, amazingly quick reflexes and sharp teeth that can effortlessly clamp
into its prey's flesh. But cats have a predatory asset that their
larger, scarier family members don't. A cat has a physics-defying, astonishingly
flexible body. They are more agile than big cats such as
tigers. Statistically cats are one of the best hunters
in the entire animal kingdom. A study found that tigers were only successful
at catching their prey 5% of the time. Domestic cats are successful 32% of the time,
which means they are listed as the 6th most successful hunting animal in the world. But over in Africa there is an endemic species
of cat known as the Black-footed cat, which is even more crazy, this species catches its
prey 60% of the time and they make an average of 14 kills every night. Making the black-footed cat the 2nd most successful
predator in the animal kingdom, the only animal more successful is the African wild dog at
number one. All this means that cats are the world's most
well adapted and best predator for catching small rodents. Rats and mice, being so small, cute and defenceless
have been forced to develop extraordinary reaction times, rapid speeds and agility so
they can evade predators. Yet the domestic cat still manages to track
them, and catch them with ease. The sadistic buggers don't even hunt rodents
for food, it is quite literally a game to them. Experts have actually said that a well-fed
cat catches more rodents than a hungry cat, because they do it for entertainment. Wow, cats are evil. And that is exactly why we need cats for our
survival. By hunting and killing rodents and rabbits
cats are doing the world a vital service. Yes, last time your little Meowly Cyrus bought
you a gruesome present, she was saving the world. A study in 1997 found that in Britain alone,
house cats collectively kill over 200 million specimens of wildlife each year. Cats therefore play a vital role in keeping
the rodent and rabbit populations in check, all over the world. The phrase "breeding likes rabbits" is no
misnomer, each season a rabbit can give birth to over a hundred babies and if you think
that's bad, rats are even worse. A female rat can mate up to 500 times with
various males over a six hour period. And a single pair of rats can produce over
2,000 offspring per year. If left to their own devices, a pairs of rats
can have over half a billion descendants within just three years. But thankfully rats and other invasive rodents
aren't left to their own devices. They are constantly on the defensive and their
population numbers are maintained at a healthy balanced level by the hard work of cats. Cats are one of the few animals on the planet
and most certainly the best, that can actually hunt and catch notoriously slippery rodents. Cats therefore are the best method mother
nature has for preventing rat populations from exploding exponentially and taking over
the world. Without cats our world would be overrun by
rats within a year or two. Trillions upon trillions of rodents and other,
small invasive species would invade every home, every business and every square mile
of the planet. But why would this be so terrible? Are rats really that dangerous? Yes. Rats pose two major threats to mankind and
the entire ecosystem. The first is disease. Although it's sometimes debated by historians,
it is widely thought that rats were the main spreader of the bubonic plague. A disease which almost wiped out Europe. Whether or not rats were responsible for the
black death, their bacteria spreading abilities should not be underestimated. Rats spend most of their time hanging out
in sewers, around piles of rubbish, and of course dead animals. These are not things one would call hygienic. There can be several thousand pathogens on
just a centimetre of a rat's fur, most of which can be spread to humans. And they don't have to bite you either, disease
can be transmitted to humans through scratches, skin contact and worst of all, their excrement
and urine. Rats use urine to communicate, to mark territory
and just because they need to go and they will urinate absolutely anywhere and everywhere. Come into contact with it and you're certain
to fall ill. Rats carry some rather horrific diseases. Such as Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome or HPS,
which can be contracted by just breathing the air around where a rat has been. HPS restricts your breathing and is often
fatal, once the onset of symptoms has occurred death can happen in as little as a few hours;
so, that's scary. But that's just a fraction of the horrors
rats possess, they also carry Typhus, Salmonella, Meningitis and Leptospirosis, all of which
can be fatal to humans. Thankfully most people very rarely come into
contact with rats, due to our hygienic environments and most importantly, the global prevalence
of rat-killing cats. Without cats there would be no stopping the
rapid multiplication of rats and the inevitable outbreaks of many horrific diseases. But believe it or not, disease isn't the worst
thing that would happen if rodents took over the world. Hunger would be the worst thing. Cats have us all fooled, thinking they rely
on their owners for survival. Here's the brutal truth, your cat doesn't
need you. Cats, even the laziest of house cats, can
find food for themselves quite easily, if they choose to, they only eat the food you
provide for them because it's easier. In fact when your pet kitty brings you a dead
mouse and leaves it on your doorstep, it's actually trying to teach you how to hunt,
because it thinks you're a pathetic human that can't find its own food. But it's this very behaviour that has thus
far saved us all from mass-starvation. You see cats hunt and kill a variety of rodents,
such as mice and rats. Rodents just love to eat food staples such
as grain. The very grain which we all eat every day. Farm cats play a vital role in the modern
ecosystem. By killing mice and rats that live in and
around storage barns where grain is kept, they stop all the grain from being consumed
or spoiled by the hungry rodents. But rats aren't picky, when they're hungry
they will chow down on just about anything, from trash, to animal and human cadavers and
any crop or foodstuff that may be lying around. In a post-catolyptic world where rats and
mice are free to multiply by the billions, each and every one of our food sources would
be decimated or disease-ridden before it even leaves the farm. A global famine would be an absolute certainty. Unfortunately disease and food shortages wouldn't
be the end, the entire ecosystem would also collapse due to the domino effect. Macquarie island is a super remote island
owned by Australia. Viewing the feral cat population on the island
as somewhat of a nuisance, because they were killing the local seabirds, a cat eradication
programme was started. And between 1985 and 2000 every single feral
cat on the island was killed. Within no time at all the local rat and rabbit
populations quadrupled, and they in turn, caused massive devastation to the island's
vegetation, depleting all food sources for the countless other animal species they shared
the island with. And the scientists soon found out that rats
love to feed on the eggs of the very seabirds which they intended to save. The local seabird population declined at an
astonishing rate due to the plentiful rats and lack of cats. The ecosystem is a very delicate balancing
act and this experiment just goes to show that we shouldn't mess with it, because the
tiniest of changes can have enormous, irreparable effects. Humans have still not formulated an effective
method of pest control for rats. The array of rat poisons available just flat
out don't work, at least not in the long run. Rats are smarter than we give them credit
for and as soon as one of the mischief, yes that is what a group of rats is called, dies
from eating rat poison the rest of the mischief learns not to trust that food location in
the future; either that or they employ a super-taster rat called Remy to check all their food before
consumption. In recent years scientists have even found
groups of rats that have developed a natural immunity to rat poisons. Until our artificial rodent deterrents are
developed further, cats remain our only truly effective weapon against them, so as long
as we have moggie we should be okay, that is of course, until rats learn how to weaponise
cucumbers. Thanks for watching.
