6 ms·
Cat Gap
- Kednicma 6y agoIt is essential when we look at deep time, or any sufficiently high-dimensional and detailed time series, to remember that we are only looking at a tiny slice. We always like to talk of "the tree of life", which might mislead folks into thinking that we get a clean cross-section of every branch of some high-dimensional tree. But, in truth, what we get is more like a tiny wedge cut out from a beanstalk with many central vines; we have only small leaves and cuttings from a mighty thick overgrowth of life.
- d4mi3n 6y agoVery true! I was also fascinated to find that it wasn't uncommon in the fossil record to have evolutionary lineages of species branch and later recombine. See: https://theconversation.com/dna-dating-how-molecular-clocks-are-refining-human-evolutions-timeline-65606 https://theconversation.com/dna-dating-how-molecular-clocks-... > DNA holds the story of our ancestry – how we’re related to the familiar faces at family reunions as well as more ancient affairs: how we’re related to our closest nonhuman relatives, chimpanzees; how Homo sapiens mated with Neanderthals; and how people migrated out of Africa, adapting to new environments and lifestyles along the way. And our DNA also holds clues about the timing of these key events in human evolution.
- edmundsauto 6y agoAlso, some of the numbers don't seem that big in context. But this situation is 7 million years - plenty of time for evolution to make lots of changes! It just doesn't seem like that big of a gap when we talk about hundreds of millions of years. The scale is astonishing.
- lisper 6y agoYep. 7 million years is a little under 0.2% of the age of the earth.
- andi999 6y agoAlthough the first 20% were useless in terms of life.
- 082349872349872 6y agoIn a much more recent, much smaller gap, horses originated in North America but died out there, only to be later reintroduced from the Old World. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_horse > "The evolution of the horse, a mammal of the family Equidae, occurred over a geologic time scale of 50 million years, ... Much of this evolution took place in North America, where horses originated but became extinct about 10,000 years ago."
- jjtheblunt 6y agodoes that page (which I seem unable to authenticate and edit) have a mistake, when mentioning the dental morphology of "Canidae" when "Felidae" was intended?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nyx_ 6y agoI looked at the cited paper[0], and I'm not sure the article author has correctly summarized its findings. As I understand it, the paper says "cyclical climate change probably caused this pattern of extinction->re-evolution (van der Hammen cycles)" and it points to overlapping changes in the geologic record (including canids and their teeth) as evidence of that claim. I can't see anywhere where the article says "changes in canine dental morphology caused the cat gap." Edited to say: oh derp, I only looked at the first line of the article - there's a discussion of that connection further down in the article, although it says in the summary that the connection is disputed. [0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-002-0392-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-002-0392-1
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoNo, they're saying that dogs evolved to fill the niche usually occupied by cats. Rapid change in dog teeth becoming more suited to eat things that cats eat says something about the presence or absence of cats in the same environment.
- KhoomeiK 6y agoNo. From later in the article: > During or just prior to this "cat gap," numerous caniform species evolve catlike features indicative of hypercarnivory, such as reduced snouts, somewhat enlarged canines, and fairly extreme reduction of their crushing molars. They propose that Felids were pushed out of their hypercarnivorous niche by Canids as evidenced by changes in Canid dental morphology from this period.
- slickrick216 6y agoIs there confounding factors here such as size, weight, skeletal composition/dimensions, and/or even day to day patterns that could account for this? Just sort of strikes me as absence of evidence not evidence of absence scenario after reading the article.
- kijin 6y agoThere are a few ways that one could reason from absence of evidence to evidence of absence, and that has a lot to do with what other kinds of fossils (if any) we've found in the same area in the same period. One possibility is that cats found themselves in relatively dry areas where their remains would be picked apart by scavengers long before any fossilization could take place. The article mentions that forests turned into savannas at the time. On a less serious note, perhaps the cat gap occurred when cats temporarily lost their skeletons and became fully liquid, or at least cartilaginous like sharks. Don't we all know how flexible they are? :)
- inbland 6y agoI'd like us all to remember that for some time, no matter how short, Cat Gap was #1 trending on Hacker News.
- 082349872349872 6y agoCats have domesticated humans because they are curious about many things including their origins, and lacking opposable thumbs to wield the tiny brushes, they never planned on doing paleozoology on their own.
- djsumdog 6y agoThey're tiny tigers we keep in our homes.
- slickrick216 6y agoSlow news day or the internets favorite animal asserting it’s rightful place. You be the judge.
- mhh__ 6y agoI'd guess that a decent percentage of organic traffic is just photos of cats. (The rest is another synonym of cats)
- 29athrowaway 6y agoCats used to be the #1 predator of human ancestors.
- nkrisc 6y agoOh, how the tables have turned now we... spend our time and money feeding them and caring for them for nothing in return? Hmmm.
- HappyDreamer 6y agoI get cat love in return -- a cat purring in my lap or next to me in the bed, and keeping me company when I am (was) doing school homework. Someone who wants to be nearby, chews on the pencil I'm writing with, falls asleep on the book I'm reading or writing in (making it not easy to turn to the next page). Yes the tables have turned
- noir_lord 6y agoThey make great pets, they do their own thing until they want to spent time with you, I work from home and they keep me company, I generally have one asleep snoring on the chair behind my desk and the other either asleep on my lap or asleep under the monitor.
- D-Coder 6y agoIt's a more effective strategy. They can only eat one human once. This way they can be parasites of a human for years. Remember, parasites: killing your host is generally a bad strategy.
- frank2 6y agoHow did people figure that out? Ever since the invention of writing, the #1 predator to humankind has been other humans, so we must go back to the time before written records to get to a time when cats were the #1 predator. My question is, in the absence of written records, how did the people of the current age determine the rate of death from the various predators? Maybe you mean the #1 predator not including other humans?
- martin_a 6y agoI just asked my cat about this "cat gap" and he didn't have anything to say about it. He's back to quietly snorring while sleeping on my couch, after his morning was filled with staring at birds outside, eating and taking a hell of a dump in his toilet. Hard to believe he's got anything in common with the predators we are talking about here.
- kungtotte 6y agoCommon housecats that are allowed outside are some of the bloodthirstiest predators on the planet. They can kill up to 200 animals per year, despite being well fed and cared for. They're doing it for sport essentially. They will hunt and kill common shrew for example despite not eating them. They'll eat mice and birds, but shrews they kill just for the hell of it.
- FeepingCreature 6y agoIsn't this what we wanted from cats historically?
- kungtotte 6y agoYeah, but this behaviour is not really bred into cats the way we've bred behaviour into dogs. Cats and humans is more of a mutually beneficial arrangement where we get pest control and they get shelter and a steady food supply. They kind of just moved in with us several thousand years ago and stuck around because it worked out well for them.
- jbotz 6y ago> some of the bloodthirstiest predators on the planet Present company excluded, of course. A typical human "sports hunter" can easily kill a lot more than 200 animals. And if you count all the animals that die to feed us or are simply accidental casualties of our infrastructure and resource extraction... well, the mind boggles.
- kungtotte 6y ago
- Theodores 6y agoThe cat gap fits a pattern with Americans just not having the numbers. In time this evolved with the bomber gap and the missile gap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap
- evolve2k 6y agoReminds me of the awesome board game “evolution: climate” [0] The game was codesigned by a climate scientist, you evolve animals designed to thrive as the climate changes. Adding a carnivore (cat) changes the game and brings quick gains eating other animals but when the climate shifts and carnivores have nothing to eat they die first. Large chunks of the game are often played with no carnivores (cats) as other strategies outperform. Great game to better understand evolutionary dynamics. [0] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/182134/evolution-climate https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/182134/evolution-climate
- b0rsuk 6y ago"Evolution" has a bit of a problem with carnivores. It's easier to protect against carnivores than to build a cost-effective carnivore. You need to pay 2 cards to have species that can eat another species (one for Carnivore trait, one more for +1 size), but only 1 card to negate it with size increase. In my experience buidling a carnivore involves walking a thin line. It's quite easy for other players to counter you and your animal will go completely extinct. In natural world animals can still prey on eggs, juvenile or sick individuals. Evolution is a bit binary.
- evolve2k 6y agoThe reality of “adding horns” or “scavenger skills” to an animal is that’d take thousands of years. So I saw each round as thousands of years at a time, from that perspective I think it’s realistic, carnivores are highly effective until they loose supply. I suppose it speaks to the benefits of being an omnivore like us.
- b0rsuk 6y agoOr you need to be clever and restrained with it. For instance, in a 1 vs 1 scenario - and I mean species, not players - it plays out more less like I outlined it above. But the equation changes if another player has 2+ potential prey species. Then he has to react by spending 1 card for each species he has. Just change your expectations - your goal doesn't have to be wrecking other players. Just exploit abundance of vulnerable species. Also, I have Evolution but no Climate (there's no localized version). I imagine it may be possible to play smart and use predators to push players into bigger sizes, then change climate to hot. For unfamiliar people - in the game, big animals overheat easier, while small animals struggle with cold.
- feralimal 6y ago"All modern carnivorans, including cats, evolved from miacoids, which existed from approximately 66 to 33 million years ago." Say no more.