A Michael Broad Blog
For cats it is the pleading purr and for dogs it is the puppy dog eyes but I’d argue that both are rooted in the same process: selective breeding for an attribute which pleases the human and therefore enhances survival. There is a difference though. Dogs are far more often selectively breed by breeders …
Six subspecies of tiger 2018 How many types of tigers are there? Scientifically speaking a ‘type of tiger’ is a subspecies so the question could be rephrased: How many subspecies of tiger are there? And the answer based on a recent study analysing the complete genome of 32 tigers is that there are 6 …
Scientists tell us that dog breeding started about 9000 years ago. This is the time when people first domesticated the wild cat. You can see the huge disparity in the time during which the dog and the cat have been domesticated. This is the reason why cats are considered aloof and independent. They are …
Maru, the famous box-loving cat, is “probably right-handed” although he likes to use his mouth directly rather than scoop out the food (see video). Maru’s amusing caretaker conducted an experiment for both her cats, Maru and Hana. You can see it in the video below. It seems to me that Maru is probably ambidextrous …
The description of this cat’s behavior is of a caring cat, Stewie, who wants to settle down the crying baby, Connar, with a gentle, paternal pat on the head. When Stewie first heard Connar he was confused and then he seems to have decided to step in to do his fatherly bit. The video …
By Sarah Hartwell I recently drafted the genealogies of white tigers from Mohan in the 1950s through to the zoo population in the 1990s. It’s something I’ve been studying since the late 1990s with the help of 2 people in the USA (one a former zoo-keeper who moved there from England). I’m now making …
This is a boring video of a really nice spotted tabby cat in long grass 🙂 Nothing happens! Don’t expect fireworks. Don’t desire hype and bling. It ain’t here. I just like the contrast of textures: the cat’s coat and the long wispy grass. I like the naturalness. I like wind. I like grass. …
The origins and history of the Turkish Angora are interesting and perhaps a paradigm case of how all ‘discovered’ breeds started out and how many of the cat breeds still have their non-pedigree, non-purebred counterparts. The street cats that were the foundation cats of the discovered breeds are still there on the streets. They …
