Posted on 06/29/2007 8:02:15 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
Scientists believe cats 'sort of domesticated themselves'
THE WASHINGTON POST
June 29, 2007
WASHINGTON – Your hunch is correct. Your cat decided to live with you, not the other way around. The sad truth is, it may not be a final decision.
But don't take this feline diffidence personally. It runs in the family. And it goes back a long way – about 12,000 years, actually.
Those are among the inescapable conclusions of a genetic study of the origins of the domestic cat, being published today in the journal Science.
The findings, drawn from the analysis of nearly a thousand cats around the world, suggest that the ancestors of today's tabbies, Persians and Siamese wandered into Near Eastern settlements at the dawn of agriculture. They were looking for food, not friendship.
They found what they were seeking in the form of rodents feeding on stored grain. They stayed for 12 millennia, although not without wandering off now and again to consort with their wild cousins.
The story is quite different from that of other domesticated animals – cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and dogs, cats' main rivals for human affection. It may even provide some insight on the behavior of the animal that, if not man's best friend, is certainly his most inscrutable.
“It is a story about one of the more important biological experiments ever undertaken,” said Stephen O'Brien, a molecular geneticist at the National Cancer Institute's laboratory in Frederick, Md., and one of the supervisors of the project.
“We think what happened is that cats sort of domesticated themselves,” said Carlos Driscoll, the University of Oxford graduate student who did the work, which required him, among other things, to befriend feral cats on the Mongolian steppes.
There are today 37 species in the family Felidae, ranging from lions through ocelots down to little Mittens. All domestic cats are descended from the species Felis sylvestris (“cat of the woods”), which goes by the common name “wildcat.”
The species is indigenous to Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. The New World, Japan and Oceania lack wildcats. Their closest counterpart in North America is the lynx.
There are five subspecies of wildcats and they look very much like many pet cats, particularly nonpedigree ones. The Scottish wildcat, for example, is indistinguishable from a barn cat with a mackerel tabby coat. These animals, however, are true wild species. They are not escaped pets that have become “feral,” or reverted to the wild.
Driscoll and his collaborators, who included Oxford zoologist David Macdonald, took blood samples and ear punch biopsies from all wildcat subspecies, and from fancy-breed cats, ordinary pet cats, and feral cats. They analyzed two different kinds of genetic fingerprints.
One was nuclear DNA, which carries nearly all of an animal's genes and reflects inheritance from both parents. The other was mitochondrial DNA, which exists outside the cell nucleus, carries only a few genes, and descends through the generations only from the mothers, never from fathers.
Both fingerprints showed that domesticated cats all around the world are most closely related to the wildcat subspecies (called lybica) that lives in the Near East.
One might think that people in each region would have domesticated their local wildcats. In that case, European pet cats today would genetically most closely resemble European wildcats and Chinese cats would be descended from East Asian wildcats. But that isn't the case.
Why not?
Genetics can't answer the question, but history and archaeology can provide a good guess.
Large-scale grain agriculture began in the Near East's “Fertile Crescent.” With the storage of surplus grain came mice, which fed on it and contaminated it.
Settled farming communities with dense rodent populations were a new habitat. Wildcats came out of the woods and grasslands to exploit it. They may have lived close to man – but not petting-close – for centuries.
Eventually, though, natural selection favored individual animals whose genetic makeup by chance made them tolerant of human contact. Such behavior provided them with them with things – a night indoors, the occasional bowl of milk – that allowed them to out-compete their scaredy-cat relatives in town.
Not intestested in what anyone else says about it.....I just know that it’s senseless and cruel to breed while thousands are purposely killed every day in this country costing taxpers millions!!
My cat comes to get me if I am in the family room when the stove timer goes off.
I like the comment I heard the other day - Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.
Yes, there's nothing like opening one's eyes from a nap on the white living room wall-to-wall to the sight of a dead mouse with one or more bleeding stumps and my cat on the other side of it, looking expectantly at me for praise.
That’s just their way of telling you to get food for them.
They’re freeloaders, plain and simple.
I got the orange tabby, Thomas from a “foster mom”. We had to be interviewed and it was agreeable and we adopted him. His mom got scared away and left the kittens. Thomas was one of them. He’s a sweetheart - real marsh mellow personality but he will stand his ground.
Debbie, our Bengal is too much! I’ve had to train her NOT to climb the walls and NOT jump in the shower with me. I’ll fill the bath tub and she’ll swim around in there and play with toys. She loves water! She also sounds different - she chrips. She’s VERY active. When it comes to food SHE is the aggressive one.
Another way to tell a Bengal is the body type - they are significantly longer. They’re very soft - pelted and come in various shades. They should have “black boots” and a black and cream tail. Of course they should have spots and some have “glitter”. Debbie doesn’t have “glitter” but she is beautiful - she’s a “blondish” coloring. Light coloring with dark spots and mint green eyes that are more oval. The eyes are another give away. They’re different in shape.
Next year I hope to get a male Bengal with “glitter”. I don’t like having them all the same age. As they get older ... like people they start declining ... I went through that before and it was hard to deal with ... one lived to be 20 years old and the other two died within months of each other at 18 years old.
I’d highly recommend Bengals - they’re smart, fun and beautiful. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to a “wild cat”. Selectively mated domestics and Asian leopard is what makes them more unusual.
Too cute for words!
Great!!!
:)
A few years ago I read a news item about a cat in England who was stealing stuff from other people's houses via the cat doors. He brought home all kinds of stuff, including IIRC an umbrella and a golf club.
I have never trusted cats. Never.
I have 4 cats right now and a damn doggie door and just rescued a pidgeon flying in my house . I shoulda let the cats eat the pidgeon then eat the cats........lol
They aren't breeding cats for *those* qualities.
And uh...animals die. Billions and billions daily. The best way to control them?" Allow people to hunt them and eat them. Spaying and Neutering on a large scale is absurdly wasteful economically, and not eating them is wasteful biologically.
I have a big garden, so I went to the human society and got a cat as IPM. I took home the cat that reached through the cage and snagged me with his paw. Naturally, he’d never been outside a day in his life, but he caught on in a big hurry. He is an excellent hunter now. He brings me a rodent, I open a can of wet food to reward him (and dispose of the rodent). The first few catches, I had a hard time getting the rodent away from him.
He comes when he is called (the dog should do so well), plays fetch, dances on command, stands (back legs) on command and is my constant companion and best buddy.
Right now he is thoroughly out of sorts with me - my granddaughter is visiting and he is outraged to discover that I can love someone else.
How much did this cost taxpayers?
What’s with the propensity for publishing peoples’ age when it has nothing to do with the story?
You're kidding right? It's the best thing to do. Economically and morally. Same goes for liberals. :)
:( Awww, I hope your kitty comes back.
We are worried about her right now, as neither one of us has seen her in 2 weeks. We call her and she won't come, but her food gets eaten and it is in a spot where other animals can't get to it, so we just have to hope for the best. Although, she does live up to her name of Xena Warrior Princess B**ch, I've seen her beat up some pretty big dogs and so far she has managed to survive not getting caught by a coyote, so she may still be out in the woods somewhere and just ignoring our calls.
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