6 ms·
The complex origin story of domestic cats
- lenerdenator 2y ago"Taken together, these studies significantly alter our understanding of one of humanity's most familiar companions. Rather than silently trailing behind early farmers, slinking ever closer to human activity and community, cats likely moved into Europe in multiple waves post-domestication from North Africa, propelled by human cultural practices, trade networks, and religious reverence." Being treated like a god will get you everywhere.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 2y agoAnd of course being able to eliminate pest populations responsible for disease transmission, food spoilage, equipment/infrastructure damage, and other various harms has earned cats that seat in the pantheons of cultures around the globe.
- lenerdenator 2y agoAnd if we're being honest, the whole soft tummies thing and purring probably helped too. ... this thread needs pictures.
- sandworm101 2y agoWolverines have soft tummies too. That we see cats as cute is not so much that they have evolved to be cute. They look little different than wild cats. We see the palus cat as cute but pet its tummy and you will lose some organs. Those humans who protected and nutured cats were better survivors. Having cats around gave them an advantage over people who were indiferent to cats. We finding them cute is a trait that has evolved in us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas%27s_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas%27s_cat
- lll-o-lll 2y agoIt’s toxoplasmosis parasites in the brain that causes the unfathomable love for cats. Those of us still uninfected[0] find it very odd. [0] dog people
- Sharlin 2y agoCat people never seem to have a need to boost their egos and take jabs at dog people in discussions about dogs. Only (a certain type of) dog people seem to do so. Insecurity? Superiority complex? Maybe toxoplasmosis makes you a better person? It is my experience that cat owners are overwhelmingly nice, empathetic human beings. There does not seem to be such correlation among dog owners.
- lll-o-lll 2y ago> It is my experience that cat owners are overwhelmingly nice, empathetic human beings. Unless you tease about toxoplasmosis.
- mkl 2y agoMany people are neither cat people nor dog people. I have no desire to be around either.
- woleium 2y agoPalus (or is it Palius?) cat has round pupils, like ours. Makes them easier to anthropomorphise.
- sshine 2y ago> eliminate ... equipment/infrastructure damage And cause it.
- gerdesj 2y agoUnfortunately evolution does evolution: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/toxoplasmosis/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/toxoplasmosis/
- jamiek88 2y ago> Toxoplasmosis is a common infection that you can catch from the poo of infected cats, or infected meat. It's usually harmless but can cause serious problems in some people The UK governments approach to using normal, simple language across all its web assets is fantastic.
- woleium 2y ago“crystal mark english” is what to tell your LLM to write in.
- mkl 2y agoI'd never heard of it. The "crystal mark" itself is a money-making thing for what seems to be a for-profit company: https://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal-mark.html https://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal-mark.html
- aitchnyu 2y agoWould LLMs be guilty of trademark infringement? Llama said its in CM. Gemini said "aiming for Crystal Mark". OpenAI called its output "plain, clear" without mentioning CM. Claude didnt comment its output. Deepseek returned "Here is your passage rewritten in clear, polished English with a refined and elegant tone—what you might call "Crystal Mark English"".
- edent 2y agoThey've published an excellent blog about their language choices at https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and-poo-and-the-language-of-health https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and...
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- WalterBright 2y ago> equipment/infrastructure damage The Cat has caused extensive damage in my house. I'm still working on repairing it.
- throwup238 2y agoHave you considered introducing the Rat to distract the Cat from the infrastructure?
- WalterBright 2y agoThe Cat only caught one Mouse in 10 years.
- rags2riches 2y ago"Food spoilage" is putting it mildly. Mice have short generations. A single mouse can have up to ten litters in one year. If unchecked, a mouse population will quickly turn all your stored food into mice.
- nandomrumber 2y agoQueensland is occasionally exceptionally good at this. Here’s some video from four years ago https://youtu.be/rAdNJ1jczVI?si=HhB-P5lcAz3zhuMI https://youtu.be/rAdNJ1jczVI?si=HhB-P5lcAz3zhuMI
- grumpy-de-sre 2y agoIn the meantime public sentiment toward cats in Australia is becoming really toxic (due to the consequences of a long-term ineffective feral control program). I swear one day when the chemical baits turn out to be worse than the cats themselves the pendulum will swing hard in favor of cats once again. They really are an indispensable tool and a big part of humanities agricultural success. FWIW I'm in favor of dropping a few billion AUD into cat control programs and deploying technologies like felixer everywhere. Up until now it's just been an underfunded borderline volunteer affair.
- arp242 2y agoMaybe store some poisoned quadrotriticale?
- nandomrumber 2y agoThat’s the trouble with Tribbles.
- thinkingemote 2y agoAre cats actually effective at pest control or is that cat propaganda? How would cats operate in these societies? I know they can catch pests but are they effective at controlling them? Maybe they will limit the growth of pests, so better than nothing. Most cats catch for fun rather than food I think Maybe we had much more cats around for this purpose, if so I'd imagine there is some archeological proof.
- Sharlin 2y agoI mean, you don't need archeological evidence given that there's a vast amount of historical evidence of cats being kept for pest control as well as companionship. Even the Western world was largely agrarian just a hundred years ago! And farm cats are still a common thing. Free-roaming cats are also a massive threat to bird populations in many places – cats are just very effective predators and birds reproduce much slower than mice and voles.
- scientator 2y agoI believe the royal society for the protection of birds studied whether cats are a threat to bird populations and concluded that they really aren't. Obviously cats do kill birds, but overwhelmingly the major threat to birds is habitat loss caused by humans. Also, cats kill rodents, which indirectly helps birds because rodents are a big threat to bird populations, because rats take eggs from their nests. In fact, cats preferentially kill rodents. Something like 90% of their diet will typically be rodents. Birds, for them, are only opportunity kills. In other words, cats are an easy scapegoat because they quite visibly do kill birds, but humans (as is usually the case) are the true underlying problem.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 2y agoIt really depends on the region. Island populations are disproportionately at higher risk to eradication by cat due to the difficulty or impossibility in replenishing the population from outside/neighboring populations.
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- euroderf 2y agoI suspect there is a strong historical correlation btwn cats and beer. You figure out fermentation, you change from hunter+gatherer to settled agricultural, you store grain, you need cats.
- dboreham 2y agoAlthough not mentioned in the article, I've heard that Egyptians developed a thing for orange cats (supposedly they look like the sun) and embarked on an intensive breeding program to make them for temple uses. Subsequently Vikings became intrigued by these orange cats on the basis they are easy to see on the deck of a ship (iron age hi-viz vests), and thereby spread them around everywhere (because Vikings).
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoFrom my understanding, orange cats are almost exclusively male. They also have one shared brain cell. Source: My family is owned by a marmalade tom.
- toast0 2y agoThe interwebs say cats have XY sex determination, and that the orange color gene is on the X chromosome and is recessive. So a male cat with an orange X will be orange, but a female cat needs both X's to be orange to be orange (a female cat with one orange X and one non-orange X will likely show as tortoise shell or calico). Assuming equal probability (P) of each X chromosome being orange so we have a chance at modelling, the males will have P chance of being orange, and females would have P * P chance. Assuming cats have evenly distributed sex, If P is 90%, 90% of males are orange, and 81% of females are orange; and 47% of orange cats are female. If P is 10%, 10% of males are orange, 1% of females are orange, and ~ 91% of orange cats are male, ~ 9% are female.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoThere was a discussion, here, some time ago, about how the orange gene was isolated.
- mlhpdx 2y ago> They also have one shared brain cell. Confirmed. Very early cooperative multitasking.
- lenerdenator 2y agoI guess I'm trying to get the message of the article. It's more of an origin story of the current lineage of domestic cats in Europe, no? It sounds like ancient Europeans would have had wildcats and older waves of domesticated felines that were mostly supplanted by the current lineage.
- jmyeet 2y agoI always figured that the cat's ability to eliminate vermin, particularly on ships, propelled their domestication and spread. This was simply too useful to early humans. I'm reminded of the Russian silver fox domestication experiment [1]. What's interesting about that is how quickly the species adapts characteristics making them more desirable for humans. [1]: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/russian-foxes-tameness-domestication https://www.sciencenews.org/article/russian-foxes-tameness-d...
- rufus_foreman 2y agoVermin on ships weren't all bad. They prevented scurvy if you didn't overcook them.
- ghaff 2y agoDomestic cats are arguably the most successful mammalian carnivores anywhere.
- EasyMarion 2y agothey hunted us for food once, figured out we’d feed them instead, and never looked back. probably the only species that domesticated us.
- method_capital 2y agoDogs have masters; cats have servants.
- Sharlin 2y agoTo be that guy, small felines never were big felines. Domestic kitties do not descend from people-eating ones.
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoMini-cats have much in common with main-cats, both in terms of software and hardware, but the power requirements are rather lower.
- lwouis 2y agoDomestication is often thought of as a unilateral relationship. Like all relationships, it goes both ways. We have domesticated cows and wheat. Now their population has reached tremendous size. So has our population. We both need the other species to survive. We need them, and they need us. You could definitely take the perspective that we have been domesticated. For example, plants have domesticated us by feeding us.
- grumpy-de-sre 2y agoI've joked that the nuclear wasteland will be populated by cockroaches, rats and ... cats. They are the ultimate survivor.
- mannyv 2y agoHumans love feeding animals. Some animals love being fed. Put them together and you have symbiosis.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SoftTalker 2y agoIt’s kind of strange to think that early humans would throw some of their hard-earned food to animals that were lurking around. Did they do it out of kindness or did they perceive that they might be able to tame them and put them to work?
- WalterBright 2y agoHumans have always left edible garbage behind.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- inejge 2y agoMammals have a strong nurturing instinct, which helps with raising progeny. (So do birds.) Strong enough that it can overflow to members of another species. No calculation or ethical predisposition required, though they would strengthen the resolve.
- somenameforme 2y agoThis is a really interesting aside, because it turns out that until the 60s nobody had actually bothered to take the time to actually measure how much time hunter gatherers spent hunting and gathering. The answer was "not much", usually around 15 hours a week! [1] This led to the 'original affluent society' paper. [2] The objections to it are quite asinine - like that cooking, cleaning, and other such time was not calculated, but of course such things also aren't counted for modern workers in their hours worked per week. Another objection being high infant mortality which again also applied, until quite recently, to industrial societies as well. It's an apples to apples comparison. The point of this is that people in the distant past had rather extensive amounts of free time. And so them taking in some pets for fun and entertainment seems highly likely. [1] - https://www.rewild.com/in-depth/leisure.html https://www.rewild.com/in-depth/leisure.html (in spite of the site's name this is an overview of academic literature on the topic) [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
- delichon 2y agoDomestic cats are a contradiction in terms. They are small wild cats who have partially domesticated hairless apes, and still have a lot of work to do.
- pixl97 2y agoA cat is a tiny tiger that lives in your house.
- jbaber 2y agoThis does seem to be European cat oriented rather than "where did domesticated cats come from in the first place?" https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/domestication https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/domestication
- alganet 2y agoI always found the conceptual intersection between cats and laptops to be full of coincidences. Humans sometimes place cats on their laps. The same happens with laptops (hence the name). Cats and laptops are often seen inside boxes. Cats and laptops are known to reproduce sounds that are similar to humans but not quite the same. Future historians will be so confused.
- dpig_ 2y agoLike laptops, you can sometimes interface directly with them via touch, but it's usually not worth the trouble.
- Sharlin 2y agoThis is why cats are so fond of lying on top of laptops. They're kindred spirits, as it were.
- euroderf 2y agoMost cats appear to store solar energy. Most laptops do not.
- nisegami 2y agoJust dropping by to say that I love my kitty friend.