Ahhh this makes me happy, especially as a casual snail enthusiast

I heard that African land snails are now being found all over Florida. I worked at a Petco in SC and someone brought one in looking to find a tank for it (not knowing what it was) and after i informed them they told me they recently caught it while visiting family in Florida…needless to say this is going to be detrimental to crops :(

Wow, the ecology of Florida is a mess.

floridian and herper here. that is definitely not a cellar snail, its way too big. that's a brown garden snail and it is indeed invasive, you can tell from the color as well. I catch them often and theyre always on brick walls.

Good to know that is cool

Totally agree. There are always people who come with the counter argument “but my cat hunting is pure nature” or “its so saddd to lock them up indoors”

As a biologist too, yes

@@TheFullStarI don’t hesitate to call those people lazy cat owners. If you give your cat proper enrichment it’s not sad to keep them indoors and if you absolutely want to give them the ability to go outdoors you need to invest either time or money into harness training or building a catio.

I have encountered so many uneducated owner who refuse to even consider this... As someone who has had both dogs and cats I find so many cat owners to be incredibly lazy people.. They don't even realize you can walk your cat on a leash everyday to get some fresh air...

As a cat owner, yes. I let my girl outside WITH supervision/harnessed. The main reasons being I don’t want her getting hurt or stollen, she’s not yet fixed, and I don’t want her killing any birds or anything else

Agreed. Lots of play, puzzle feeders, open screened windows for fresh air, basking spots near windows, and even a few indoor NON-POISONOUS (do your research, people!!!) plants can do wonders to keep them stimulated. Mine occasionally come out to sit on the porch, but are happy to come back inside in a few minutes. Cats absolutely can lead happy lives indoors. Also, please spay and neuter them unless you know for certain that you can put the kittens in good homes-the less feral ones, abandoned to live outdoors, the less ecosystem destruction! (Just adding to this person's great comment!)

And if you really wamt them to visit the putside, try a harness!

I wonder what about cats makes people want them but NOT want them enough to put them out.

You can also harness train your cat and go on backyard adventures together :)

I've walked (and still do) both my cats each night it's not too cold.

That little girl is going to LOVE videos of casting fire ant mounds with aluminium. 😂

Childhood? I still thoroughly enjoy doing this as an adult 😂

Why do you do that exactly?

@@Dodl1 I guess it would be kinda fun, and they're harmful so its not entirely a bad thing

@@Dodl1 I was born in Florida and lived there for 13 years. We always messed with the fire ants because of the amount of times we watched them kill native anoles, field mice, etc. Native animals. We couldn't interfere because that would mean reaching our whole hands into fire ant mounds. They suck. It is in fact a staple of Floridian lives to mess their homes up and kill them on sight

lol

Right?! It’s kind of ridiculous how many of each category are even in most back yards! Don’t even get me started on invasive plants 🤦🏼‍♀️

Same, I didn't know those ducks were invasive. My neighborhood is full of them.

Those ducks have been around for 100 of years they dont quake like a duck and they don't honk like a goose they perch in trees they come in alot od different colors and there meat tastes like roast beef I use to own them

They’re not even ducks

you should see the invasive fish population, pretty much it it was kept in an aquarium once it can be found in the water

@@voodooray fish aren’t that damaging except for heavily predatory ones like snakeheads which aren’t kept in aquaria you probably mean plecos or guppies which aren’t harmful as plecos are mostly herbivorous and guppies are a prey species

That’s awesome!!

I haven’t had it that bad but when out fishing I occasionally get stung/bit. One bite will literally leave a SCAR on me for years!

@@kitkatthe2tails542 this is very true!

I will always remember ending up absolutely covered in fire ants after stepping on a nest during recess on my first day of preschool. I got called Ant Girl the rest of the year. Your story still wins, though.

I also have an ICU fire ant story. I wasn’t in Florida 😢they are the worst!!!

Ouch!! I’ve gotten bitten a few times but never to that extreme

Thank you! Finally not someone demonizing letting cat get outside time in these comments.

I want a catio so bad. Unfortunately, I currently live in an underground apartment. But one day I will have a catio!

@@Black-Swan-007 I hope one day to get one as well! Thankfully there are so many variations and options when designing one!

@@zessonateacloud I don't think anyone was demonizing letting cats have outdoor enrichment, we're saying do it the PROPER way, with harness training or catios or supervised time, instead of just opening the door and letting your cat roam around the neighborhood out of sight. People STILL get mad at the suggestion of catios/harness training.

Bingo

Fire ants are so terrible in Florida.

Like in Halo. Starving the enemy is the only guarantee. I know it's a random reference. Haha.

@@PP7Silenced Forerunner reference to the purpose of the Halo rings. I got it.

@@SlammyWinchester arent they terrible everywhere?

Thank you for being such a great caretaker of your kitty and steward of the environment :)

Omg yesssss

I know right!! It's too dangerous for them! A couple years back a tuxedo cat got run over by my neighbors daughter in front of their house. I was sad when I saw it, the father saw me and panicking asked if the cat was mine, it wasn't. No body claimed the cat so he and a few other neighbors dug a grave and buried the poor kitty. I also rescued a black cat that was in our property because a big thunderstorm was going to hot and he was outside. I kept him for 2 weeks but nobody claimed him so I took him to an animal shelter.

Agreed. Unless they're a working barn cat, there's no reason for them to be outside.

​@@melanopygus Even working barn cats do a terrible job and destroy the ecosystem. The amount of birds I find on my adoptive sisters farms that have been killed by the cats FAR outweighs the rats.

Im shocked they are so wide spread. From what I've heard, they are very tasty ducks.

@@jamieblack3235 they are the best dual purpose homestead duck! They taste good, their eggs are great, they reproduce rapidly and at high fertility rates, and they don’t make quacking noises and they aren’t insufferably loud! Their amazing

Yeah, im actually planning to trade my geese for some next year. Thats part of why I'm surprised they are invasive.

@@jamieblack3235 enjoy them! They’re such a fun species!

A city I live near has a pond full of Muscovy ducks and there's signs all over saying to drive slow ducks xing. And there's a fine to pay if you kill one of them.

I’ve heard probably the dumbest justification for this recently: “cats” were native to the EU so “deserved” to be outside. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

yeah, a lot of people also justify keeping their cats outside with "they're predators, they're meant to be outside" - i have seen so many cats get hit by cars, killed by foxes/other predators and the local animal rescue is full of cats with frostbite (we had -30°C last week). keeping cats outside should be considered animal abuse. we take our cat outside in a harness and he is perfectly happy about that.

@@speedwaymethadrineso are dogs but most people will say its because dogs are easier… nope its just people not being responsible

​@@khillsthat's so ridiculous though because the common house cat, you know, the ones we keep as pets, haven't been native to any ecosystem in over 10 000 years 🤦🏼‍♀️ so it's pure bs.

@@KaleMakaiYouji IKR? But no, no, it’s okay, because the animals there evolved for the cat… by that logic, bobcats and cougars are in the Americas, and yet. (ESPECIALLY since there are small pockets of those very, very old native cats… and they’re considered VERY different than a house cat!)

I understand it for "barn" cats. Ones on farms where being outside is basically essential. They actually do have a good reason to be there. But for most house cats it seems pretty crazy. We don't do that with any other pets, so why cats 🤔

@@sillyface6950 Even in those situations though I think in most cases it's still unfair to both the cat and the local wildlife. Unless access is restricted to the barn, the cat will decimate populations of small animals regardless of whether or not they're pests (rip small birds, amphibians, and reptiles), most are left unspayed/neutered/see regular vet attention in general, and the cat still gets exposed to a number of threats such as diseases, wild animals that will prey on them, and cruel humans who'll do who knows what to them. I''m all for giving cats a job as a mouser, but few people do the work to make sure the pest animals are their only victims and that the cat is kept safe in the process.

@@iichiigo7751 I put barn in quotations to try make it less misleading but i think I made it more confusing. By barn cats I mean the whole farmyard and not just the barn, restricting them to just a barn would be more unfair (for the feline) unless they are being treated as a house cat. Unlike in other areas where the cats are just pets, although there would still be damage to native species due to not watching the cat 24/7 it would be limited to the farm itself and possibly the close areas if they go that far, as opposed to house cats which live in areas where its either a mix of people and nature (where the cat is likely to cause more damage to native populations, especially birds) or its a busy city full of dangerous roads where the cat is lucky to not get ran over. As for people, farmland doesn't tend to have many strangers unless its one of the ones that's open to the public. However I do also believe that people should be responsible for doing their best to keep their animals as healthy and safe as they can (including vaccinating against diseases and doing vet trips when needed) and do all they can for preventing any accidental breeding, also that animals shouldn't be dumped or left as strays. Its a shame so many humans don't provide the proper care for animals that they own. But at least there's also a lot that do.

@sillyface6950 Cats will wander several miles from their homes and roads exist even near farms, as do coyotes and cougars. In fact dangerous predators are more likely in more remote/rural areas. Cats are domesticated and don't belong outside. And in less urban areas they'll likely have more access to non-pest and even endangered animals. And people in the country areas in my personal experience tend to view cats as expendable at best and pests themselves at worst. I'll end it at that. Edit: actually I'll add that an entire barn to explore and run around in is far from cruel if they're given proper amenities i.e. food, water, and things that act as toys. Unless you consider a shed a barn.

​​@@sillyface6950what do you mean by that last sentence? What are we doing to cats that we aren't doing to other pets?

There are a ton of non-native cichlid populations (both African and South American varieties) all over the state, along with various crazy types of amazonian catfish and clown knife fish. Don't get me started on the snakeheads... A few waterways near Miami even have sizable betta populations now. It's gotten more than kinda insane.

Aww, it never occurred to me to keep a house gecko as a pet. Wish I had, lol. Last month I was cleaning my great-aunt’s house (she died a couple months before) and I found a baby house gecko trapped in the kitchen sink. No one had been in the house in weeks, so it was just dumb luck that I found him. He was dehydrated, so I put him in a container with a small piece of sponge soaked in water and a bottle cap of water. I let him calm down in the dark kitchen, then just after sunset I let him go outside my house near my porch light. I’ve seen a few house geckos around since then (they never seem to brumate or anything here. Just hide on days when it’s too cold) so hopefully he’s among them. After I saved him, I watched him for a while, and I loved watching his little heart pump through his skin. It’s always so fascinating that you can almost see right through the young ones.

Feral cats hide too though, and they're particularly difficult to control in areas with not so cold winters, because the cats have a much longer breeding season.

​@ILuvAyeAye the burms can eat pretty much anything though & are taking out all kinds of native species & they breed so much.

@@beccaroo1990 that's also part of reasoning, at least cats aren't gonna take down everything!

@@ILuvAyeAye well, they can't hide very deep into sharp grass like burms sometimes can, and in general have less offspring and are overall easier to capture or find, but however you choose is fine! They all gotta go anyways

I agree re pythons-that was my choice, too.

Good point! I forgot about that.

Bull and Cow in Elephants is referring to their sex, Sirenias (Manatees and dugongs) are sea "cow" based on they are typically found in the sea and graze primarily on seagrass.

I agree with you

Bells/collars. I'm not going to make excuses, though I try and keep my cat's outdoor time under control, but the fact that most cats I see don't have bells, or collars at all, makes me frustrated. I had one cat who would basically attack you to be able to get outside, he hated being collared but he didn't get a say in it.

My neighbor walks their cat every day on a leash.

Don't ever come to any of my family farms then. Most of the cats roam free.

I work at a cat shelter and we only adopt out cats to people planning to keep them indoors only. It is so hard to educate some people about why this is so important. They get really mad over it and insist that cats belong outdoors. But the only way we’ll accept adopters letting their cats outside is if they have a catio _already built_ or if they’re knowledgeable about how to train a cat to walk on a leash.

The whole SOUTH has fire ants. I try to garden organically as much as possible, but there's two things I'll pull out the chemicals for - poison ivy ( I do as much mechanical removal as I can, but I'm terribly allergic,) and fire ants.

Someone else in the comments confirmed it was a cellar snail, a native species, so good news! :D

looks like a cuban land snail. they get big and have a rounded shell like the one in the video, and have the same body and shell color/patterns. saw a bunch of them in the keys last year. not an expert though

I didn’t know you could be immune to fire ants but that makes sense, I had a bunch of fire ants crawl up my hair and start biting me when I was a little kid and it didn’t really hurt much. I always wondered why

@@pdpuppers similar story. I was hauling wood for a fire at a camp gathering. I’d followed all the rules, but I guess I didn’t wait long enough for the ants to leave, but all I felt was tickling. Didn’t even realize I’d been bit until I put the log down

I prefer melted aluminum, makes cool sculptures… 2 birds one stone. 👍

@@KerriGilpin I tip my figurative hat to you.

I go with the python because they get big enough to kill native crocodilians and wild cats.

Im ok with feeding as long as you are also getting them fixed because then you are replacing wildlife with another food source, but feeding to feed? Nope

If the cats are already spayed/neutered, there's actually nothing wrong with feeding them. Especially if you're able to tame some of them and get them into homes. My friend's dad had a mom cat whose trust he gained by feeding her, and she ended up bringing both litters to him, which he then managed to get them to a shelter and adopted out (the second generation of kittens he was actually able to accustom them to people since the first were a little jittery). I think mom got adopted too because she was an absolute sweetheart and just loved to be pet. But yeah if you're not doing any kind of spay/neuter and you're just feeding the cats with no intention of socializing them for adoption, that's a problem.

There's a really interesting study happening in Canada right now on whether feeding feral colonies reduces predation on wildlife! It makes sense that it would but we'll have to wait and see the results. And yes you definitely also need TNR happening at the same time. As much for the sake of the cats than the wildlife, constantly having kittens leads to so much suffering.

If the people feeding them are also taking steps to stop the colony expanding (getting them nuetered, treating or removing sick cats, and finding homes for friendly cats) then it can actually be a good thing.

😂 Glad I wasn’t the only one with that thought!

:( It is really sad. It seems to be much harder to curtain in areas that stay relatively warm through the winter (like the southern US), because they keep having high numbers of kittens year round, which doesn't happen in places with colder winters.

That and people tend to get super defensive and mean and just over all unpleasant when you tell them they should really keep their cats inside. How hard is it to understand that it's not only safer to keep your cat inside but also that outdoor cats are an ecological menace.

Um... I'm pretty sure Burrowing Owls are native... or maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment?

@@sharzah1 Burrowing Owls are native. Nile Monitors are not and they are taking a heavy toll on the Burrowing Owls because they can raid their nesting burrows. They also love eating cat and dog food that people leave out.

The boat thing is still an issue sadly. As a floridian, I was kinda hoping they'd bring it up.

Thank you! I was looking to see if someone said it lol

I mean aren’t manatees still endangered?