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How cats conquered the world (and a few Viking ships)
Nature,com ^ | 20 September 2016 | Ewen Callaway

Posted on 09/21/2016 5:10:09 AM PDT by SJackson

First large-scale study of ancient feline DNA charts domestication in Near East and Egypt and the global spread of house cats.

Thousands of years before cats came to dominate Internet culture, they swept through ancient Eurasia and Africa carried by early farmers, ancient mariners and even Vikings, finds the first large-scale look at ancient-cat DNA.

The study, presented at a conference on 15 September, sequenced DNA from more than 200 cats that lived between about 15,000 years ago and the eighteenth century ad.

Researchers know little about cat domestication, and there is active debate over whether the house cat (Felis silvestris) is truly a domestic animal — that is, its behaviour and anatomy are clearly distinct from those of wild relatives. “We don’t know the history of ancient cats. We do not know their origin, we don't know how their dispersal occurred,” says Eva-Maria Geigl, an evolutionary geneticist at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris. She presented the study at the 7th International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Oxford, UK, along with colleagues Claudio Ottoni and Thierry Grange.

(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: africa; agriculture; ancientnavigation; animalhusbandry; cats; egypt; eurasia; evamariageigl; felissilvestris; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; thevikings; vikings
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To: katana
Nice fable, but I've seen plenty of cats take down rats of equivalent size.

My bitch Corgi is death on rats. What I don't "get" is how she differentiates between rats and other rodents. We have yard sited bird feeders, and squirrels, chipmunks and rats all help themselves to the wastage on the ground. We turn Rosie loose, and she bee-lines for the rat, ignoring the others.

21 posted on 09/21/2016 5:55:42 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel and NRA Life Member)
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To: Mashood
Very cute.


22 posted on 09/21/2016 5:56:21 AM PDT by katana
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To: katana

I’ve got one of those with a bit of beagle in her blood. Her prey drive DNA is activated by small critter movement.


23 posted on 09/21/2016 5:56:33 AM PDT by Rebelbase (Bill and Hillary for ADX Supermax!)
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To: SJackson

[perfected the *amber lamps* look of disdain]
24 posted on 09/21/2016 5:58:37 AM PDT by Daffynition (*If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?*~ Gene Wilder)
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To: dinodino
The crazy cat ladies are gonna be all over this thread.

Oh, puh-leeze.

I'm not *that* crazy. If you were to talk to me, you'd almost think I'm normal.

25 posted on 09/21/2016 5:58:53 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
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To: SJackson

26 posted on 09/21/2016 5:59:29 AM PDT by ETL (God PLEASE help America...Never Hillary!)
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To: katana
Keeps our local squirrel population in top physical condition...😈
27 posted on 09/21/2016 6:00:32 AM PDT by Mashood
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To: SJackson
I call your pathetic Viking Cat and raise you Miaowara Tomokato:


28 posted on 09/21/2016 6:02:04 AM PDT by rjsimmon (The Tree of Liberty Thirsts)
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To: Wonder Warthog
I don't know about that.

When I was in high school, my sister had a cat that could take down a full grown squirrel, and did on more than one occasion. Still, I've never known of another one.

Generally, so I've read, cats hunt the juvenile rats, a good in itself, but not the full grown ones. Generally predators do not care to be hurt themselves in hunting, so there is a certain size differential they maintain.

Read a short, insightful book called Why Big, Fierce Animals Are Rare, I forget whom it is by.

29 posted on 09/21/2016 6:04:19 AM PDT by chesley (The right to protest is not the right to disrupt.)
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To: T-Bone Texan

30 posted on 09/21/2016 6:05:19 AM PDT by ETL (God PLEASE help America...Never Hillary!)
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To: COBOL2Java

31 posted on 09/21/2016 6:06:43 AM PDT by ETL (God PLEASE help America...Never Hillary!)
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To: Daffynition

32 posted on 09/21/2016 6:09:50 AM PDT by ETL (God PLEASE help America...Never Hillary!)
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To: SJackson

33 posted on 09/21/2016 6:14:42 AM PDT by ETL (God PLEASE help America...Never Hillary!)
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To: chesley

We have feral cats in our neighborhood. We once found a squirrel head and tail lying on the ground, with most of the in-between all gone. We are sure it was one of the cats.


34 posted on 09/21/2016 6:44:11 AM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, If you can keep it.")
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To: ETL

Norwegian Forest Cat????


35 posted on 09/21/2016 7:20:25 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel and NRA Life Member)
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To: InterceptPoint

Cats know exactly what we are thinking.
They just do not give a damn.
But they do know what we are thinking.


36 posted on 09/21/2016 7:28:49 AM PDT by cpdiii (DECKHAND ROUGHNECK MUDMAN GEOLOGIST PILOT PHARMACIST LIBERTARIAN , CONSTITUTION IS WORTH DYING FOR!)
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To: Wonder Warthog
Apparently...

The Norwegian Forest cat is a domestic cat breed that originated in Northern Europe, and one that is naturally at home in cold climates, possessing a long, water resistant coat with an extra layer of insulation provided by a denser, more woolly undercoat. One of the larger domestic cat breeds, the Norwegian Forest cat is a robust and visually impressive cat that enjoys spending a lot of time outdoors and roaming around. They are popular as pets both in their home country of Norway and the other Scandinavian countries, and also enjoy a considerable following here in the UK.

The history of the Norwegian Forest cat

The exact origins of this naturally occurring breed are not definitively known, but there is evidence to suggest that the first cats of the breed’s ancestry were probably introduced to Norway with the Vikings in around 1,000 AD.

The cats adapted naturally to thrive in the region’s cold winters, and the breed likely developed from the introduction by Viking invaders of longhaired cats that bred with locally occurring domestic and wild shorthaired cats, to produce the cat breed that we know as the Norwegian Forest cat today.

Norwegian Forest cats were prized for their hunting abilities, and were popular as both farm cats and ship’s cats for this reason. The first Norwegian Forest cat breed association was formed at around the time that the Second World War broke out in 1938, in an attempt to preserve the breed and further its aims. However, these first preservation efforts for the Norwegian Forest cat were hampered by the war in Europe, as the breed interbred in great numbers with non-pedigree domestic cats, leading to the Norwegian Forest cat as a pure breed almost dying out entirely.

After the war, the Norwegian Forest Cat Club made great efforts to preserve and establish the breed, saving this large and noble cat from almost certain extinction. During the 1970’s, the first Norwegian Forest cats were exported to the rest of the world market, and gained recognition as an official breed by most of the world’s formal feline registries by the late 1970’s.

http://www.pets4homes.co.uk/pet-advice/more-about-the-norwegian-forest-cat.html

37 posted on 09/21/2016 7:33:38 AM PDT by ETL (God PLEASE help America...Never Hillary!)
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To: chesley
"Still, I've never known of another one."

I'm talking farm cats, not house pets (though some do). We had a calico momma cat, who "kittened" several generations that we kept some kittens out of. She was "the boss" of all her offspring, including the males. They weren't true ferals, as all of them would come to be fed and petted, but otherwise they acted as they a feral group which had our farm as "territory". Any of them could (and did) take rats, squirrels, etc.

And then you have breeds like Maine Coons, Norwegian Forest Cats, etc, that are BIG. I doubt any of them would be even remotely intimidated by any rat.

38 posted on 09/21/2016 7:34:01 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel and NRA Life Member)
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To: SJackson; LUV W

39 posted on 09/21/2016 7:34:33 AM PDT by SandRat (Duty - Honor - Country! What else needs said?)
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To: cpdiii
"But they do know what we are thinking."

Um, no. Cats are clairvoyant....they know what we are GOING to think, before we think it.

40 posted on 09/21/2016 7:37:28 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel and NRA Life Member)
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