first domestic cat

Early humans might have been wiped out by catastrophic climate change as their population had dwindled to less than 1300 adults of reproductive age because of droughts according to research.

The reason why humans and their pets might never have existed

There is an interesting article in The Times today, Friday, September 1, 2023 which I would like to discuss briefly. The title is “Early humans were on brink of extinction”. Remarkably the research that Kaya Burgess reports on found that the population of Homo sapiens’ ancestors dwindled to less than 1300 adults about 900,000 years …

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A catio improves a cat's personality

4 Australian cat owner attitudes to domestic cat containment or freedom to roam

My understanding of this study (see base of page) is that there are four reasons why Australian cat owners keep their cats inside their home. And there are five different ways of owning a cat in terms of containing them inside the home or allowing them outside. Australians have the highest domestic cat containment rates …

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Vikings brought the cat to North America?

Did the Vikings bring the first domestic cats to North America?

There’s been quite a lot of discussion about the first domestic cats in America. We are sure that early Americans, around 10,000 years ago, did not domesticate a wild cat species and thereby create the first domestic cat. That happened in and around what is now Syria with the North African wildcat. So, the only …

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All of today’s 600m domestic cats descend from 5 female matriarchal wildcats

In the image below I have tried to present a feel for what the Fertile Crescent was like around 10,000 years ago when ‘at least five different females from the wildcat population’ befriended farmers and founded one of the greatest populations of domestic animal companions the world has seen: the domestic cat. Of course, around …

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Wildcat today looking quite friendly

Evidence that wildcats lived with humans in Poland 7,000 years ago

This story confirms, in my view, that semi-domesticated wildcats travelled with migrants from the Eastern Mediterranean to other parts of the world including Poland where scientists have unearthed the 7,000-year-old remains of wildcats at a farming settlement. Scientists found the humerus bone of a wildcat next to human items, ceramic vessels, in the sediment. The …

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Human body language signal to cat elicits loving response

Humans should have domesticated an intelligent herbivore?

It seems incongruous that for thousands of years humans have shared their homes with fearsome predators. I am referring to the domestic cat. The reason why we do is because of the initial reason why the wild cat was domesticated. They were a utilitarian animal. They were useful as working animals in keeping down rodent …

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The Levant

Cats may have been first domesticated 14,500 years ago

A recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports has come to the conclusion that the domestication of the cat may have occurred thousands of years earlier than we once imagined. They decided that because the house mouse existed in the Eastern Mediterranean 14,500 years ago it is likely the first domestic cats did too. …

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Difference is size and weight of wild ancestor of domestic cat and dog respectively

Why are big cats like lions and tigers stronger than big dogs and wolves, but domestic dogs are stronger than domestic cats?

The answer to this question is actually straightforward. Because of circumstance and because the Near Eastern wildcat can be domesticated, it was domesticated about 10,000 years ago. The Near Eastern wildcat (aka North African wildcat) is quite a small animal. In fact, as expected, it is of a similar size to the domestic cat. It …

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Note: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified.
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