3 ms·
Beautiful article, after stumbling in so much IA crap this article is so refreshing. But anyway, i would have loved more talk about the specific adaptation tha
by Iulioh 3y ago
Beautiful article, after stumbling in so much IA crap this article is so refreshing.
But anyway, i would have loved more talk about the specific adaptation that makes cats perfect, i feel like the author was a little to vague and i was waiting for it ...
- ghaff 3y agoIt was interesting although it's really Felis catus (aka domestic cats) that is most incredibly successful and is basically the same as the European wildcat. Part of this is probably that they're very adaptable--while the article makes the statement that they're famously solitary other than lions--cats can actually be quite social at least when they're not hunting. I agree that the article doesn't really provide a lot of the why though I'm not sure anyone really knows.
- SoftTalker 3y ago> [domestic cats are] basically the same as the European wildcat. You see this in that cats will revert to a wild, feral nature if they are not acclimated to living with people very early in their lives.
- ghaff 3y agoGrowing up in the country, we had various cats wander in and out of our house over time. Some were very happy to adapt to the warm bed and regular meals thing and others never really did.
- dageshi 3y agoYes, I've seen feral cats that actively self domesticated themselves by sneaking inside our house and sitting on furniture as if they belonged there... they ultimately became house cats. And from the same set of kittens I've seen some that I've still never been able to get near.
- Sharlin 3y agoHowever, as I mentioned in a sibling comment, (female) ferals do form colonies, a type of social structure not seen in wild felines.
- Sharlin 3y agoFeral domestic cats form social organizations where adult males have their own territories, and defend them from other males, but territory fringes are neutral zones where cats tend to coexist and mingle more or less peacefully. But more interestingly, feral females and their juvenile offspring tend to form colonies (of typically closely-related individuals) where females share parenting duties and even bring excess kill to nursing, sick or infirm colony members. I don't think any of the wildcat species has anywhere near this degree of social structure so it's quite likely a result of the (self-)domestication process which has obviously favored more social individuals. Given that kittenhood is the most social phase of the life of almost all felines, the shift of F. catus from a solitary to a more social lifestyle could be understood as a form of neoteny, like many other traits common to domestic animals.
- jjtheblunt 3y ago"IA" ?