Angela
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I don't remember if we've discussed this before...
"How cats conquered the world(and a few Viking ships)"
http://www.nature.com/news/how-cats-conquered-the-world-and-a-few-viking-ships-1.20643
The most interesting conclusion:
"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."
I guess there's a lot more work to be done.
As to the first part of the statement, I suppose it depends what you mean by "domesticated". They certainly can live with us without harming us, they're very useful at keeping vermin away, and they can be lovely companions (says the owner of two dearly loved cats), but they're not like dogs. It seems to me they can return to their feral state in the blink of an eye, and they can still breed with wild cats.
"Cat populations seem to have grown in two waves, the authors found. Middle Eastern wild cats with a particular mitochondrial lineage expanded with early farming communities to the eastern Mediterranean. Geigl suggests that grain stockpiles associated with these early farming communities attracted rodents, which in turn drew wild cats.
After seeing the benefit of having cats around, humans might have begun to tame these cats.
Thousands of years later, cats descended from those in Egypt spread rapidly around Eurasia and Africa. A mitochondrial lineage common in Egyptian cat mummies from the end of the fourth century bc to the fourth century ad was also carried by cats in Bulgaria, Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa from around the same time. Sea-faring people probably kept cats to keep rodents in check, says Geigl, whose team also found cat remains with this maternal DNA lineage at a Viking site dating to between the eighth and eleventh century ad in northern Germany."
As Skoglund pointed out in the article, they need to use more than just mtdna to answer the remaining questions.
Have you guys ever seen pictures of cat mummys? I find the whole ancient Egyptian thing with cats fascinating.
Maybe part of it is because they're so beautiful and graceful:
I have the same earrings.
Bastet in semi human form:
Of course, we still have Cat Woman too, equally beautiful. I've lost track of how many actresses have played her.
"How cats conquered the world(and a few Viking ships)"
http://www.nature.com/news/how-cats-conquered-the-world-and-a-few-viking-ships-1.20643
The most interesting conclusion:
"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."
I guess there's a lot more work to be done.
As to the first part of the statement, I suppose it depends what you mean by "domesticated". They certainly can live with us without harming us, they're very useful at keeping vermin away, and they can be lovely companions (says the owner of two dearly loved cats), but they're not like dogs. It seems to me they can return to their feral state in the blink of an eye, and they can still breed with wild cats.
"Cat populations seem to have grown in two waves, the authors found. Middle Eastern wild cats with a particular mitochondrial lineage expanded with early farming communities to the eastern Mediterranean. Geigl suggests that grain stockpiles associated with these early farming communities attracted rodents, which in turn drew wild cats.
After seeing the benefit of having cats around, humans might have begun to tame these cats.
Thousands of years later, cats descended from those in Egypt spread rapidly around Eurasia and Africa. A mitochondrial lineage common in Egyptian cat mummies from the end of the fourth century bc to the fourth century ad was also carried by cats in Bulgaria, Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa from around the same time. Sea-faring people probably kept cats to keep rodents in check, says Geigl, whose team also found cat remains with this maternal DNA lineage at a Viking site dating to between the eighth and eleventh century ad in northern Germany."
As Skoglund pointed out in the article, they need to use more than just mtdna to answer the remaining questions.
Have you guys ever seen pictures of cat mummys? I find the whole ancient Egyptian thing with cats fascinating.
Maybe part of it is because they're so beautiful and graceful:
I have the same earrings.
Bastet in semi human form:
Of course, we still have Cat Woman too, equally beautiful. I've lost track of how many actresses have played her.