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- The researchers believe our close relationship with cats came about around the same time humans began tinkering with agriculture, around 10,000 years ago. That's a bit more recent than dogs, which are believed to have been domesticated in Siberia around 23,000 years ago — long before we undertook cultivating plants instead of scavenging for them.
www.salon.com/2022/12/14/how-the-evolution-of-domestic-cats-traces-the-history-of-colonization/How the evolution of domestic cats traces the history of ...
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Jan 19, 2018 · As cats were domesticated, they began to be selected and bred for more interesting colorations, thus giving us today’s range of beautiful cat breeds. The Beginnings of Domestication “Our genetic evidence, our archaeological evidence, and our geology all tell us that cats were probably not domesticated more than 8,000 to 10,000 years ago ...
- 5 Ways to Calm Down a Crazy Cat
Using cat-friendly toys, such as interactive LED lasers or a...
- 5 Ways to Calm Down a Crazy Cat
Jun 1, 2009 · Armed with artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization technology, cat breeders today are pushing domestic cat genetics into uncharted territory: they are hybridizing house cats with...
The domestic cat originated from Near-Eastern and Egyptian populations of the African wildcat, Felis sylvestris lybica. The family Felidae, to which all living feline species belong, is theorized to have arisen about ten to eleven million years ago and is divided into eight major phylogenetic lineages. The Felis lineage in particular is the ...
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- Tabby Takeover
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A comprehensive survey of cat genes suggests that even after felines wandered into our lives, they remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.
In true feline form, cats took their time deciding whether to jump into humans’ laps.
In a new comprehensive study of the spread of domesticated cats, DNA analysis suggests that cats lived for thousands of years alongside humans before they were domesticated. During that time, their genes have changed little from those of wildcats, apart from picking up one recent tweak: the distinctive stripes and dots of the tabby cat.
Researchers surveyed the DNA of more than 200 cats spanning the last 9,000 years, including ancient Romanian cat remains, Egyptian cat mummies, and modern African wildcat specimens. Two major cat lineages contributed to the domestic feline we know today, they report in a study published Monday in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The earlier ancestors of today’s domestic cats spread from southwest Asia and into Europe as early as 4400 B.C. The cats likely started hanging around farming communities in the Fertile Crescent about 8,000 years ago, where they settled into a mutually beneficial relationship as humans’ rodent patrol. (See little-known small cats in “Out of the Shadows, the Wildcats You’ve Never Seen.”)
Mice and rats were attracted to crops and other agricultural byproducts being produced by human civilizations. Cats likely followed the rodent populations and, in turn, frequently approached the human settlements.
By comparing the DNA of cats throughout history, the study captures a glimpse of how the animals were changing even before humans started to cart them across the globe, Ottoni says.
Surprisingly, wild and domestic cats showed no major differences in their genetic makeup, and one of the few traits available for telling them apart was the tabby coat marking.
The study sheds light on the late emergence of the blotched or striped coat markings, which began to appear in domesticated tabby cats in the Middle Ages. The gene for a tabby coat dates back to the Ottoman Empire in Southwest Asia and later became common in Europe and Africa.
It was only in the 18th century, however, that the markings became common enough to be associated with domestic cats, and in the 19th century, cat fanciers began selecting cats with particular traits to create fancy breeds.
Overall, cats became a domesticated companion of humans without changing much, says evolutionary geneticist and article coauthor Eva-Maria Geigl. Domestic cats look similar to wildcats, but they aren’t solitary, tolerating both humans and other cats. (See "Our Most Stunning Pictures of Big Cats.")
This is in contrast to dogs, the first animals to be domesticated, Geigl adds. Dogs were selected to perform specific tasks—which never was the case for cats—and this selection for particular traits is what led to dogs’ diversification to the many breeds we see today.
“I think that there was no need to subject cats to such a selection process since it was not necessary to change them,” Geigl says. “They were perfect as they were.”
Though everyone might not agree on cats’ perfection, felines are among the most popular pets in the world today, with as many as 74 million cats living in U.S. homes.
“We’re discovering incredible things about where they’ve come from, how far they’ve gone, and what kind of impact they’ve had on humans,” Ottoni says.
“I think studying more about this species is going to open up even more about the domestication process.”
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Sep 21, 2023 · Human settlements in an area of the Old World known as the Fertile Crescent are where cat domestication originally began – around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago! This was confirmed by scientists and geneticists who performed an extensive genetic analysis of wildcats and domestic cats.
Until recently, researchers estimated that cat domestication dated back to 9,500 years ago. However, a groundbreaking study published in Science magazine theorizes that the history of cats as companion animals goes back much further, approximately 12,000 years.
Nov 3, 2019 · The team identified two major waves of domestication that contributed to the role of cats in human society today. The first took place in the Fertile Crescent roughly 7,500 years ago, when wildcats from Anatolia started hanging around human settlements due to the presence of mice and rodents (Ottoni, 2017).
