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> Infected mice also have a reduced fear from predators, likely for the same reason. In primates, there's some non-fear of cats too. For humans and domestic f
by shagie 2y ago
> Infected mice also have a reduced fear from predators, likely for the same reason.
In primates, there's some non-fear of cats too. For humans and domestic felines, this isn't much of an issue. For chimpanzees who share territory with leopards, this is more of an issue. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopards-and-a-primates-fear-and-survival.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k0.9KAd.dP_wjNFuXols&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/science/a-parasite-leopar... (and the paper - Morbid attraction to leopard urine in Toxoplasma-infected chimpanzees https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215015171 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221... )
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoAncestral humans shared territory with leopards, and children were vulnerable (1). Big cats are still dangerous. Having a leopard stare at you, even through a fence, does raise the heart rate. But I don't know why we regard big cats so relatively favourably, when an evolved innate repulsion, such as to spiders or snakes, would make as much sense. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predation_on_hominids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Leopard_predati...
- CuriouslyC 2y agoCats are just aesthetically well put together animals. We probably also like the smaller ones due to 5000 years of them predating upon vermin that like to hang around our encampments.
- thinkingemote 2y ago5000 years isn't that long in evolutionary biology timescales. But culturally we do kinda like the usefulness of the smaller cats. I would say that the cute cats are domesticated species, like many animals. So they wouldn't exist without humans, and it's in their benefit to behave to survive.
- CuriouslyC 2y agoInterestingly enough, the genomes of wild forest cats and domestic cats have diverged FAR less than other domesticated animals such as dogs/sheep/etc. We domesticated other animals, but up until the 18th century or so I'd say it's more accurate to describe what we've done with cats as "co-evolution"
- shagie 2y agoCats are more "companion" rather than "domesticated" and (until recently) cats weren't bred for specific traits (and those now tend to be aesthetic choices rather than "practical" choices). Compare this with dogs that are more of a "working animal." We've bread dogs to fill specific roles because they were larger to work with. If humanity had tried to find companionship in the mountain lion instead of Felis lybica (the wild cat). Also for the how almost-domestic the African wild cats are: https://youtu.be/ZRqlSr1Yp1M https://youtu.be/ZRqlSr1Yp1M The other part of it (as I understand it) is that cats body form is not as easily selected for when compared to animals that humans have domesticated. Dogs have a number of body sizes that can be "easily" selected for - https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#body-size https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#body-... and https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#other-body-features https://embarkvet.com/products/dog-traits/traits-list/#other... (there's even a mutation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAS1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPAS1 in wolves that was selectively bred into dogs https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/3/734/2843179 https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/3/734/2843179 ) I suspect part of the lack of range comes also from that the cats of size that don't eat us are not ones that can be crossbred with cats in the wild to introduce new useful genes. Trying to cross a domestic cat a wild cat doesn't produce a new cat that is useful in a new role ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrids#Confirmed_domestic_cat_×_felid_hybrids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felid_hybrids#Confirmed_domest... ). Compare this with domestic dogs and the various wild dog species.
- nradov 2y agoDogs have twice as many chromosomes as cats. This makes it easier to selectively breed them for desired characteristics.
- schmidtleonard 2y ago> Cats are just aesthetically well put together animals "They have a mat of messy protein extrusions in place of an exoskeleton, their eyes have no facets, and their thorax is completely indistinct from their abdomen!" - Insect Aesthetician
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago"And a ghastly shortage of legs!" While I subjectively agree about cats, "aesthetically well put together" is downstream of the "evolved innate" factors.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y agoFaceted eyes wear your brain out faster from all the input. Maybe a bug would think they're a feature.
- lo_zamoyski 2y agoI don't agree with that kind of aesthetic relativism. It undermines both the nature of the mind as something that can objectively know reality (which undermines the relativistic claim at the same time), and the richness of reality itself. Materialism is bunk, and something that corrupts and replaced reality with some crude reductive imaginary thing. Beauty is objective. Taste is subjective. Hence why we can say that someone has poor taste, i.e., the subjective fails to align with the objective. I can admire the beauty of an insect as an insect without me being an insect. Similarly, if an insect were intelligent, possessed with an intellect, it could judge the feline as a beautiful creature as a feline. "As X" is important, because it is a matter of how well the specimen realizes the telos of its species. Hence, why defect is ugly. You wouldn't say pi is an ugly integer. You wouldn't say a hammer is a crappy saw. You wouldn't say a fish is a bad mountain hiker, except as a shorthand for "fish do not mountain hike, are not anatomically + physiologically ordered toward hiking". And of course there degrees of good, and therefore, beauty, based on how much more you resemble the Highest Good and therefore the Most Beautiful, Goodness and Beauty as such.
- nine_k 2y agoCats have large, forward-facing eyes, and a relatively short snout and jaws (especially smaller cats like the domestic cats, caracals, etc). This makes them look less like a typical predator (long jaws, like wolf's) and less like a typical grazing animal (side-looking eyes, long jaws, like a horse or camel). They look close enough to humans to look cute, possibly triggering some if the low-level reactions which human babies trigger. Arthropods and even snakes are morphologically too distant for that. Nevertheless, people usually find large-eyed geckos more cute than armor-eyed chameleons or tiny-eyed crocodiles.
- Nevermark 2y agoThe crazy jumping around people do when they are unexpectedly exposed to a proximate spider or snake might not be so adaptive for escaping large cats.
- formerly_proven 2y agoProbably not the only one who finds spiders interesting/curious/useful but most insects kinda disgusting/ugly/dirty.
- seanw444 2y agoI've grown quite fond of spiders. I don't have the same aversion I used to when I was younger. There are so many hobo spiders on the exterior of my house, but I leave them be unless they're in my way, because they've noticeably reduced the populations of every other nuisance bug. As long as they keep to themselves and don't invade my space, I'll let them chill. And I just relocate them if they wander in. Killing them is just sad. Wolf spiders are welcome in my basement though. They are smart enough and have good enough eyesight that the likelihood of getting bit by one is super low. They hunt down all the pests in your home. What makes them extremely cool is that they're kinda like nature's hydraulic robots.
- bitwize 2y agoI'm with you. I'm viscerally still creeped out by spiders, but I leave them alone and let them do spider-things (which, as you say, generally involves hunting down insects that I do not want around). The same with house centipedes, which my wife wants to kill on sight but I urge her not to.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoExactly: I appreciate spiders, because they remove flies etc. I'll go out of my way to let web spiders be. I'll safely move a hunting spider out of the house. But I do not want to touch them or pet them.
- nine_k 2y agoHumans have even less aversion towards marine arthropods. A lot of people would find eating beetles gross, but eat gladly shrimp, and find a lobster a delicacy.
- 2y ago
- BurningFrog 2y agoBig cats look adorable on a screen. In person they can produce a different reaction.
- marcosdumay 2y ago> In person they can produce a different reaction. A couple of years ago, a jaguar climbed from its habitat on the local zoo here, and put its paw over the fence to "play" with the humans. A really unexplainable amount of people did not have a different reaction.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> Ancestral humans shared territory with leopards, and children were vulnerable For a long time I've been interested in the fact that children are afraid that, if they are left alone, they will be eaten by monsters. In the ancestral environment, this is absolutely true. But the belief is obviously innate and not learned. What's interesting is that the innate belief is correct in the details, as opposed to being something that is not necessarily true but nevertheless produces the correct behavior.
- digging 2y agoI've read, and like, a theory that their unpredictable movement is a big driver in the fear of spiders and snakes. I just found this with a quick search, for some evidence (it's not what I read originally, years ago): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20438087231151502 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20438087231151... Of course, I'm not an expert in anything so this could be bunk.
- bitwize 2y agoSpider movement is just creepy to me, even when I know where it's going. Something about the way its legs move just gives me the shivers. Even Spider-Man used to give me the creeps when I was a young child, particularly the non-speaking variant seen on The Electric Company. I think there's just something viscerally, instinctually unsettling about how some arthropods move, which gives rise to arthropod-like monsters in fiction (xenomorphs, Bugs in Starship Troopers, Zerg, etc.). Spiders, the poor beasts, get the worst of our fear because they don't move their legs via muscles like we vertebrates, or even insects, do; their body pumps hemolymph into the legs, forcing them to straighten. This hydraulic-pressure system of movement is just different enough to our visual system to be really weird.
- fuzztester 2y ago>Ancestral humans shared territory with leopards Still do, in parts of India and some other countries, and not just where poor people live https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41135979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41135979
- trte9343r4 2y agoSome people lost fear from other predators: aggressive dogs. They even force family members to live in dangerous situation, where they get attacked and injured regularly. Mental illness or brain parasite is the only possible explanation for dog owners behavior.
- shiroiushi 2y agoThis is definitely true, at least in the US, and it's quite different from historical norms too. Ages ago, aggressive dogs were put down quickly (or used as guard dogs, with appropriate restraints). People also didn't normally keep large dogs inside, sleep in beds with them, etc. But now it's common for some odd reason for people to want to keep aggressive dogs around their young children, and then act shocked when something terrible happens.
- bartvk 2y agoEven when a dog is not aggressive, unexplainable things can happen. Last year, there was news in The Netherlands about a case where grandparents were babysitting. Their normally docile German shepherd killed the baby within seconds. https://www-nhnieuws-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/329594/opa-en-oma-van-door-hond-doodgebeten-kind-in-diemen-krijgen-geen-straf?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true https://www-nhnieuws-nl.translate.goog/nieuws/329594/opa-en-...
- shiroiushi 2y agoWow, some serious stupidity in this case: >The dog had bitten another dog two years earlier and a cat seven years before the incident with the baby, but an expert stated that aggressive behavior towards animals is no reason to assume that it is also aimed at people. Really? These "experts" are morons. German Shepherds are well-known for their use as police and military dogs because of their size, strength, and aggressiveness. Sure, they can be trained better than some other known-to-be-vicious dogs, but they're still dangerous. Putting one in a room with an infant is pure stupidity. Even worse, this particular dog had already attacked other animals in the past. At the very best, you might be able to claim that a dog that bit a cat years ago isn't necessarily unsafe around full-grown adult humans, but a German Shepherd chomping on a person isn't an immediate death sentence, but with an infant it really is. This article also sucks because it doesn't even tell us what ultimately happened to the dog.
- workincircles 2y agoA fascinating video of a leopard attacking baboons[1]. The big cat achieves a scratch on one baboon and then runs away from the troop. Enough to infect and then later pick off an errant victim? To my eye, the baboons are sad at the expectation that they will soon lose a friend. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wnKEXs6YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wnKEXs6YM
- lycopodiopsida 2y ago> The big cat achieves a scratch on one baboon and then runs away from the troop. It is most likely running away because it found itself completely overwhelmed by multiple attackers - it is not a hunting style big cats go for.
- fuzztester 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack "Attacks in India are still relatively common, and in some regions of the country leopards kill more humans than all other large carnivores combined.[9][10] "