They were probably outside meowing until we let them in.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Well that's how I domisticated my previously feral cat. Guess I'm a part of the ancient tradition of feline domestication. I also think there may be something to the whole toxoplasmosis hypnotism thing with regards to domestication. I was kind of cat-hater and just felt sorry for the feral beast after awhile. Wasn't too crazy about him at first but then unexplainably fell head over heels in love with the bugger.
we didnt domesticate the feline. the feline domesticated us
If cats underwent the same intense eugenics as dogs underwent ("bred for function") over the last 150 years, this graphic might be a bit different. The cats we see today are probably those whose ancestors were good at hunting mice and rats, where their more indifferent cousins probably weren't selected for.
In some parallel universe, mice/rats became a delicacy and the cats were truly tamed...
If you go to china, you can buy rat on a stick -- and it genuinely tastes great
What's funny is that ferrets have been domesticated for thousands of years for a similar purpose as cats but they're still viewed as wild or exotic by many. California and Hawaii still prohibit ownership of ferrets out of fear that they will harm native wildlife populations. Yet cats are completely legal and are much more capable hunters in every situation other than underground burrows. And anyone who has owned or interacted with a pet ferret knows how completely useless they would be surviving in the wild on their own. They have zero self preservation instinct.
A friend of mine had a couple ferrets, they are pretty adorable. I recall, they made a nest inside his couch. 😄
Cats were domesticated much more recently than dogs. Dogs were domesticated 20k-40k years ago, cats at most 10k years ago.
Not just that, but the nature of domestication is different. Cats just started living close to humans because they could hunt rodents that ate grain, and weren't domesticated in the same sense as dogs.
In another 10k years will they let us pet them backwards witbout drawing blood?
this is such an interesting juxtaposition to people's attitudes towards pitbulls.
I've heard somewhere that dog's genes are more tolerant to mutations than cats, and that's why there are more diversity of dog breeds. A cat offspring with a mutation would just die in the womb or soon after birth, while dogs with a similar "defect" would live. I don't have a source, but it seems plausible to me.