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"Taken together, these studies significantly alter our understanding of one of humanity's most familiar companions. Rather than silently trailing behind early f
by 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.
- yungporko 2y agowolverines are also fuzzy and adorable. knowing full well how much it might fuck my shit up, i don't think i could stop myself reaching to pet it if i ever crossed paths with one.
- 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...
- 2y ago
- 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.
- 2y ago
- 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.