Why were the gulls and cats not afraid of the bald eagles?

Bald eagles mostly go for fish, and the gulls are smaller and more nimble. Good observation though.

I think I read somewhere that the bald eagle has a lifting power of about 4 lbs while your average cat weighs about 8 lbs. I imagine an eagle might go after a cat if nothing else was available but it is probably easier to fish.

There normal food is plentiful at that site, which the other animals would know.

@marinelife, Are animals smart enough to sense that they are the less favored prey?
I did notice that the gulls did not perch on the same rocks as the eagles.

There were also a lot of black vultures (definitely an odd mixture of wildlife), which I assume are big enough to fight off an eagle or at least give it a hard time.

@LostInParadise Yes, their lives depend on it. I had a cat that would sleep on the sofa next to my German Shepherd, but she would not go near my whippet (a hunting dog that she wisely did not trust).

Animals in the wild learn at an incredibly young age which other animals to avoid or they don’t stay alive to make it to maturity.

Animals communicate in many subtle ways both verbally and with body language. Their parents are constantly teaching them by example.

I saw a great documentary about bears and in one part of it, a wildlife rehabilitator who was raising orphaned cubs would take them our on foraging trips to teach them which plants and berries were safe to eat. He would make sure that they smelled his breath so the scent would be imprinted in their brain as safe.

I’ve also seen videos of dog trainers in Western states which typically have dangerous snakes, setting up exercises to specifically train groups of dogs with their owners to recognize and avoid rattlers etc.

Because they’re domesticated these dogs didn’t have the same parental influence and training as wolf pups in the wild. So it was better to teach them BEFORE their first encounter with a rattler ended up being a deadly one.

@marinelife

That was one smart cat who probably still had the majority of his proverbial nine lives still intact :)

A friend of mine works with a Greyhound rescue group who keep a few resident cats around to test out the prey drive of new arrivals before they place them in homes.

Some of the dogs are totally indifferent to the cats but others are more typical of the breed.

But I imagine that most cats would still sleep with one eye open when in the presence of hunting breeds like that :)

@Buttonstc Yes, Augie was a very smart cat. She could open doors and she could reason. She lived to be 18.

We have a rescue greyhound (which is why we no longer have cats). He has a high prey drive, which 40% of them retain (the rescue groups don’t tell you this or no one would adopt them). He will go after anything. Small dogs, rodents, cats he tries to kill them. I find it disturbing even though otherwise he is a lovely dog, very friendly and loving to people.

That’s the primary reason I never adopted a Greyhound even tho they’re really wonderful dogs and those who were used on the race track have had all the aggression bred out of them (or they don’t have a racing career since dogfights can totally derail a race.

But they’re still chasing that little fake rabbit lure around all the time so their prey drive is getting constantly stoked.

I figured that even if a particular dog passed the cat test under normal conditions, what’s going to happen if a cat runs directly across his field of vision (sort of like that lure).

Since my cats came first, I just figured why risk a possibly explosive combo like that.

But a lot of people who’ve adopted these wonderful dogs have spoken very highly of them (but they didn’t also have cats :)

They said they’re just loving affectionate couch potatoes about 90% of the time. And as long as they get that other percentage of time running around, they’re fine. It’s logical when you think about what their previous experiences typically were.

Their races were intense but brief and the rest of the time they were just lounging around in their yards or cages.

And these gentle dogs make wonderful family pets and are great with kids.