The Ancestry of Cats

[mitsuki lover]

Scientists did a genetic study of cats and found out that they all descend from the wildcat subspecies lybica that lives in the Near East.Testing showed
that there were genetic fingerprints of five main subspecies but that they
all stemmed from the same wildcat.
Further more it was indicated that unlike other domesticated animals,cats
tamed themselves.
Basically what happened was that when agriculture started up the mice found they had a good deal with all the grain that was being stored and the wild cats found THEY had a good deal with eating all the mice up.
Over the millennia certain wildcats were able to overcome their fear of man and became the ones that our every day housecats descended from.

[Technomancer]

I'd read about this this morning. Here's the article:
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070625/full/070625-10.html

[Mithrandir]

...

Centuries of breading to "eat more mice" and all I get out of it is a fat cat that wont even eat my spiders.

What is this world coming to.

[Ingemar]

Now explain to me how a cat can starve to death in a house full of available fresh cat food.

[Raiden no Kishi]

Gee, when you consider that Noah would have carried only a few cats, likely "mutt" animals that represented the cat kind as a whole, it was only a matter of time before scientists found out that all these cats came from some singular source ~ and in the Middle East, no less. God's good like that, no?

.rai//

[Slater]

lol, ya.

Well, it's not that God's good... well, He is, but... hey, the facts do align themselves in time, eh?

[Technomancer]

Now explain to me how a cat can starve to death in a house full of available fresh cat food.

It never learned to use the can opener?

[Shao Feng-Li]

Our cats will chew through the bag... they aren't hungry, they just like food

But yeah, all considered, they all came from a pair of cats... like we came from a pair of humans, heh.

[TriezGamer]

Now explain to me how a cat can starve to death in a house full of available fresh cat food.

Cats can choose to starve themselves. I used to show cats as a kid, so I don't remember clearly, but ...

From wikipedia:

Cats can be fussy eaters, possibly due to the mutation which caused their ancestor to lose the ability to taste sugars. Unlike most mammals, cats can voluntarily starve themselves indefinitely despite being presented with palatable food, even a food which they had previously readily consumed. This can happen when the vomeronasal or Jacobson's organ becomes accustomed to a specific food, or if the cats are spoiled by their owners, in which case the cat will reject any food that does not fit the pattern it is expecting. It is also known for cats to merely become bored with their given food and decide to stop eating until they are tempted into eating again. Although it is extremely rare for a cat to deliberately starve itself to the point of injury, the sudden loss of weight can cause a fatal condition called hepatic lipidosis, a liver dysfunction which causes pathological loss of appetite and reinforces the starvation, which can lead to death within as little as 48 hours.

[Ingemar]

It never learned to use the can opener?

The operative word is "available." Meaning already on the dish.

[Stephen]

Somehow, I doubt our cats would ever starve. Other night while watching a movie, I came back into my room from a bathroom break to find one of my cats very much enjoying the pretzels I had been munching on.

[mitsuki lover]

Cats and can openers.

Seriously though my cat will sometimes ignore a whole bowlful of food left for her.Though we think that she might be hunting mice and birds.

And I am SHOCKED!I say SHOCKED,that I actually beat Technomancer in
posting a science related thread!

[JasonPratt]

Fearfully, my cat don't need no stinkin' can-opener. Well, bottle-opener anyway. She somehow managed to undo a full bottle of Sobe mineral water the last night we had her put up after surgery. (I mention that this was the last night, because we then figured she had recouped enough to be released back outside for a while. {g} Though basically she released herself--practically flew out the door, and didn't try to get back in the house for months.)

We joked that she was missing drinking out of dirty puddles, which is what Sobe kind of tastes like (thus explaining why we hadn't drunk it yet ourselves...)

How she managed to unscrew an unopened plastic bottle remains a mystery known only to God and Squeak, however. {mental note to ask Him to explain that one, sometime...}

[mitsuki lover]

Cats are amazing that way.
I don't think a dog would have figured it out.A dog would still be playing with the water bottle.
Although a pig might have figured it out since pigs are supposed to be pretty intelligent.
And I can pretty much guess the kind of surgery your cat had.They always say to keep cats indoors after having them neuter or spayed.

[Technomancer]

And I am SHOCKED!I say SHOCKED,that I actually beat Technomancer in
posting a science related thread!

In all seriousness, I haven't posted that many science-related threads. Mostly this is because many of the articles that I find most interesting would probably spark a few contentious debates.

[mitsuki lover]

Perhaps but I was just astonished that you didn't get word in first on our feline friends.

[Technomancer]

Perhaps but I was just astonished that you didn't get word in first on our feline friends.

It wasn't a story that I found tremendously interesting. It makes perfect sense that unlike dogs, cats would not be domesticated until the neolithic. And given that that started in the near east, it's not really surprising that the antecedants of today's domestic cats would originate from there. Realistically, there have been several far more interesting stories relating to paleontology and archaeology over the past year. Admittedly, giant penguins aren't particularly revolutionary, but they're still pretty cool.