What affects us affects cats
Why don’t we see many feral cats with long fur? It is about functionality. The suggested answer is that long fur is unsuited in most places because it requires human attention to keep it in good condition. Without human intervention the skin can become infested and infected as it becomes matted. Another less important …
It is an interesting if slightly bizarre thought. The theory is that over a period of say 500 years (my estimate) feral and stray cats will shape-shift to have greater surface to volume ratios which will allow for the dissipation of body heat in animals which maintain a constant temperature (homeothermic). Climate change will …
It may surprise many Americans to realise that the cheetah lived in Wyoming, Texas and Nevada between 12,000-2 million years ago (the Pleistocene epoch). And remarkably, this large, wild American cat looked very similar to the cheetah that we know today except it was considerably larger and probably weighed more than 95 kg compared …
Yes, there is a common ancestor to the cat and dog. If you believe in evolution as set out by Charles Darwin in his work “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection…” you will believe that there is a common ancestor to all animals not just cats and dogs. And that …
Do domestic cats come from big cats? The answer has to be no. The reason is because the big cats split off and formed their own path millions of years ago. This is a discussion about the taxonomy of the cats. And it’s about the evolution of all the cats. They all have the …
The question is interesting because living, newborn kittens don’t learn to hiss. I would say that newborn kittens know how to hiss the moment they are born. They have inherited that vocal ability from their parents and grandparents and so on. This genetic history is handed down from one generation to the next. It …
Although this precise question has been asked and answered many times, I will throw my hat into the ring, briefly. There are two reasons why cats are scared of cucumbers, (1) they are hardwired to avoid snakes as they’ve inherited an instinct to regard them as dangerous and the cucumber has similar dimensions, except …
Italian archaeologists have unearthed the bones of nine Neanderthals from a hyena den about 100 km south-east of Rome. They think that the hyena den might have been the home of Neanderthals before it was taken over by hyenas. It got me thinking about other predators at that time who fed upon Neanderthals and …
