Even the most antisocial of wildcats exhibits complex social behavior in one phase of its life: as a kitten, interacting with its mother and littermates. Kitten

Even the most antisocial of wildcats exhibits complex social behavior in one phase of its life: as a kitten, interacting with its mother and littermates. Kittens meow if they get separated from their mother, they pick up cues from their mother in unfamiliar situations, and so on. Those experiments were very reminiscent of how a kitten interacts with its mother. Domesticated cats and dogs exhibit neoteny: the retention of several juvenile traits in adulthood. What's more, neoteny appears to naturally result when you selectively breed a canine or feline for a sociable, human-friendly phenotype. In housecats, social behavior may be a neotenous trait, exhibited by their wild ancestors only in kittenhood. Our pets can be seen as living in a sort of a prolonged adolescence and perhaps even regarding us as surrogate mothers of a sort. What's especially interesting is that humans also display neoteny, and it is likely related to the theoretized "self-domestication" of ourselves that the article refers to.