NEW RESEARCH ON HOW DOGS AND CATS BECAME MAN'S BEST FRIENDS

NY Post ^ | June 6, 2009 | Maureen Callahan

[Scanian]

They have lived in our homes, been members of the family, slept on our laps for over 10,000 years. Yet it is only recently that science has begun to answer how it is that cats and dogs came to be our most prized companion animals - discovering, along the way, how the domestication of cats and dogs actively helped change the course of human history.

"Domestication," says scientist Carlos Driscoll, "is evolution that we can see." Driscoll is a researcher at Oxford University and the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, where much of the world's leading work on cats has been done over the past 30 years. (Cats, like dogs, have their own versions of human diseases - they suffer from feline leukemia, HIV/AIDS, SARS - and so are especially valuable for scientists.) A happy, unexpected byproduct of this research has led to recent discoveries in how and why these two animals yoked themselves to human beings, and vice versa. When did this pair bonding begin, and why? What were the benefits? How long did it take for dogs and cats to become dependent on humans - or are they, really? And what is it that these animals can tell us about not only our biological makeup and evolutionary history, but about what it is to be human?

[AnAmericanMother]

I bred what I would call a modified type -- not the apple heads, but the longer-headed cats before the type became SO extreme.

I have pics of my show cats but have never scanned them, this was back when computers took up most of a good sized room. Most of their ancestors aren't on the internet anywhere either.

Maloja's Mr. B was a very handsome Blue Point male, and my big Blue Point looked just like him. Di Napoli, Sia-Mews, and Singa are all behind my cats . . . .

Here is a pretty Di Napoli cat, not in my bloodlines (probably a cousin) but looks just like one of my females:

Fan-T-C's Tee Cee was behind my older stud cat Mackie:

This is the cat I wish was NOT in my cats' bloodline - Thaibok Teriyaki. I saw him put his teeth right through Judge Walter Friend's hand at a cat show in Tennesee, and then hide under the bleachers and bite his owner for good measure. He had a TERRIBLE temper but was a very handsome cat. I thought since he was 3 generations back that the very mellow tempered mother of my stud cat would cancel it out . . . it did, sort of, but Finny was a little . . . edgy.

[AnAmericanMother]

Love the Siamese! Just posted pics of cats from some of the catteries that were in my cats' bloodlines -- I bred cats years and years ago, before we had children, and before the internet, so I can't find very many pics of the ancestors of my cats.

I can't believe nobody has posted a picture of Maloja's Mr. B. He was a magnificent Blue Point male, really perfect in every respect. I have a pic of him and I may just have to scan it.

[TASMANIANRED]

Selective breeding isn’t evolution.

Selective breeding is intelligent design by humans.

[Fawn]

[Fawn]

[AnAmericanMother]

I scanned an old gravure photo I had from a magazine --

Bad picture, but he just was a REALLY handsome boy.

[nina0113]

I gave up on lint rollers about seven thousand years ago.

Those new Pledge things work beautifully - the company says to throw them out when they're full (five minutes in MY house) but you can in fact open them, by snipping off one side and one end's worth of the little plastic pins with a pair of toenail clippers. That lets you open it enough to pull the huge furball out, but has enough pins left to snap back closed to keep going.