First Hard Evidence for the Process of Cat Domestication 144
sciencehabit writes "Cats have been part of human society for nearly 10,000 years, but they weren't always string-chasers and lap-sitters. Ancient felines hunted crop-destroying rats and mice for early farmers, and in return we provided food and protection. At least that's what scientists have long speculated. Now, they can back it up. Cat bones unearthed in a 5000-year-old Chinese farming village indicate that the animals consumed rodents and that some may have been cared for by humans. The findings provide the earliest hard evidence of this mutually beneficial relationship between man and cat."
Backwards (Score:5, Funny)
These guys have it the wrong way around. Humans didn't domesticate cats, cats domesticated humans. Within about half an hour of yge first cat realizing it could get foods and grooming from a human just by looking cute and rubbing against their legs every nowand then it made the human its servant and lived a life of leisure. I bet it never bothered to kill anything that wasn't within a law's length of it again.
Re:Backwards (Score:5, Funny)
I must apologize for the above post. I'd like to claim that a cat walked over my keyboard but the reality is that autocorrect did its usual amazing job.
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I have lots of strange abbreviations in my personal dictionary.
Re:Stop blaming autocorrect! (Score:5, Funny)
There is a reason you get are forced to preview your post before submitting.
And Muphry's law [wikipedia.org] still applies :)
Re:Stop blaming autocorrect! (Score:5, Funny)
I see waht you did there.
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There is a reason you get are forced to preview your post before submitting.
It's so you can see what you mis-typed. Right after you click the "Submit" button.
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I can't understand how misspellings end up online at all. Mine are all underlined in red. Doesn't Windows do that?
But allow me this opportunity to air my pet slashdot peeve: Why do people consistently forget to put a space after an italics tag? That drivesme nuts.
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[...] But allow me this opportunity to air my pet slashdot peeve: Why do people consistently forget to put a space after an italics tag? That drivesme nuts.
That's no drive. That's a short putt.
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There is a reason you get are forced to preview your post before submitting.
Irony notwithstanding... just like we're all forced to read EULAs?
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Oh dear god, only the insane idiot would want to keep intact female cats. The incessant yowling will make you kill things.
And intact make cats, Yay! Everything smells of pee and their special brand of "scent".
Using medical technology to fix design flaws with nature are perfectly ok. And then we have people that think it's ok to let kitty get pregnant and then let the kittens go in the neighborhood, or worse, the scumbag that throws all the kittens in a garbage bag and then tosses them on the highway.
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We had plenty of unaltered female cats on the farm. Out of 59 cats or so , more than half were female. Some wandered off, hawks and owls kept the herd strong and the population floated in the 40s most times. I NEVER had a problem with yowling, I guess they went to find a more private place. How do you screw with 50 others hanging around watching?
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Re: Backwards (Score:4, Funny)
Oh dear god, only the insane idiot would want to keep intact female cats. The incessant yowling will make you kill things.
How is that different from human females? *duck*
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The howling isn't that often. I have to agree about male cats, unless you neuter them before they reach puberty your house will STINK.
And remember, if you can't afford new furniture every year, you can't afford a cat (you should see how shredded my 5 year old couch is).
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I made a cat scratching post and started mine (dearly departed) on it when they were kittens. Don't buy a post, pure garbage. Go out and find a dead tree about 5 in diameter, saw flat butt ends, and leave it about about 3 foot long. Then get a 3/4" in sheet of plywood approx 1.5 feet on a side, this is your base. Also get a 10 in long 2x6 and a 3/8'" dowel, about 2ft worth. Center the 2x6 on the base, glue it. When dry, screw it down from the back side of the base up but not through the 2x6 (drill holes fir
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The trick with scratching posts is that they need to be on the natural travel path. For instance, the one at the entrance to my home office gets heavy use, because in order for my cat to come visit, she passes right by it. As a result, she prefers that over scratching the furniture. Plus she always gets petted after using it because it gets my attention.
It also help
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And, I would add, lots of laughs and genuine affection -- not the slavish doggy kind. Yes, I am a cat person.
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Makes me think of my old cat with two noses.(side by side) She would hunt and bring back full grown rabbits, eat the guts and leave the carcass in the yard for the others. She was an outside cat though. I've had at least one mouser-Tonkinese, who regularly laid dead mice at my feet. Good Kitty! I think it depends on their level of boredom with the taste of kibble.
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After I put in a cat door, my cat started bringing me mice "gifts" every morning. One day, she waited patiently outside my bathroom door with a live mouse in her jaws. As I stepped out of the shower, she bit a hole in its head and dropped the squirming mouse, blood spurting out of its skull, at my feet. Freshest gift ever.
Nice kitty.
I finally locked the cat door when she brought in a bird. Ugh.
Re: Backwards (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like you need a cat door that unlocks only when the cat isn't carrying anything [quantumpicture.com].
FloControl! (Score:2)
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Told my cat he could hunt all the rodents he wanted (including some enormous rats), but if he ever brought home a bird that I'd beat him with it until the feathers fell off. Came home from work one day and found a dead robin on the kitchen floor. Called Tux in, closed the cat door behind him, and the chase was on. There were feathers from one end of the house to the other. He never brought home another bird, and I never even saw him stalking any after that.
I eventually moved to Peru and gave him to a ni
Re: Backwards (Score:2)
Re:Backwards (Score:5, Funny)
You may be more right than you think: a scientist has proposed the theory that toxoplasmosis carried by cats affects everything we feel and do [go.com].
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You've apparently read Bolo Strike, from Keith Laumer's universe, written by William H. Keith Jr. If not, you should check it out.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
yet another cat vs dog comment (Score:2)
cats and dogs have different evolutionary strategies.
A dog wants you to be happy to ensure you keep feeding him.
A cat wants you to know your place to ensure you keep feeding him.
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I think the more correct line is:
A cat makes sure you are unhappy until you have fed him.
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Can you imagine a pack of modern house cat's successfully patrolling farmland?
Yes. Easily. As a child, I had a cat that was a holy terror to squirrels and birds. 3-4 dead critters a week and he wasn't even doing it for food. He never ate them - just left the bodies there. Our other cat ate them. I had no doubt that he could provide for himself in the absence of us.
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Back about 1980 I had one that spent all day every day hunting gophers, and was so good at it that he completely exterminated them within about half a mile of my rural house, and so thoroughly that after the cat died, it was a good three years before I saw another gopher. (Prior to this cat, they'd been thick as plague.)
Conversely, once I came home after being gone for a week, and here's three lazy cats in the house watching a mouse sitting in the middle of the floor, but none could be arsed to get off thei
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Can you imagine a pack of modern house cat's successfully patrolling farmland?
Easily, because it's a common sight out in farmland. Maybe not so much in the big corporate farms but smaller family farms will usually have anywhere from a dozen to fifty or so cats running around the farm taking care of rats, mice, keeping 'coons and foxes at bay, etc. In fact, two of the cats I now have indoors, were born to barn cats and taken in while still kittens.
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You've never lived on a farm. Farm cats are bigger, tougher, more aggressive and disease resistant than the inbred apartment cat you probably know. Feral city cats tend to be smaller (since they're not competing with racoons), but are generally just plain nasty if they weren't handled extensively by humans in the first weeks of their lives. Modern breeds of cats, just like dogs, have nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with inbreeding and the Victorian fantasies of 'racial purity' that gave
Re:Backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
Only weak humans are domesticated by their cats. My cats obey my orders; they come when called and a sharply worded "OUT!" makes them leave the room. I once taught a cat to play dead when I pointed my finger at him and said "bang". You simply have to understand cat psychology and their instincts and other motivations.
As to hunting, a cat doesn't consider hunting a job. To a cat, chasing things is the funnest thing in the world, even a laser pointer. My cat has made it clear that she understands where the red dot comes from, but she still likes to chase it (the other one is elderly and no longer plays).
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I once had a cat that was freakish smart (on a par with an average dog). This first became evident when one day I was hiding behind a box and using a 'fishing line' to play with the feral kittens. All but one chased the string in the usual way. The freak looked at the string, looked UP the string, then jumped over the box to grab my hand. (Which is exactly what average puppies will do.) This cat later became a house pet... which gave me opportunity to watch him with mirrors. The other cats thought something
tasty cats (Score:1)
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No
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Well, I guess it wouldn't have been UUOC either way.
Not entirely mutually beneficial... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not entirely mutually beneficial... Toxoplasma gondii parasites, anyone?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/01/220113-sneaky-cat-parasite-takes-over-human-brains-science/ [nationalgeographic.com]
And once infected, you are twice as likely to get in a car accident, among other negative effects.
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And once infected, you are twice as likely to get in a car accident, among other negative effects.
I'm sure car accidents weren't an issue 10.000 years ago. :)
Re:Not entirely mutually beneficial... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Not entirely mutually beneficial... (Score:1)
Yabadabadoooo!
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Only in Kentucky according to the museum on early Earth history and other Biblical things.
I must be fucked then (Score:2)
with my 7 cats. Maybe thats why I like playing The Need For Speed on my 3DO
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It has nothing to do with parasites. My beautiful black cat is living proof that some cats are possessed by Satan.
She's a feisty beast and very evil. The fact that she's black only makes it more evident.
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Give me evil over smart any day... My five year old giant mutant "Halloween" cat has figured out how doorknobs work. I am so screwed...
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And once infected, you are twice as likely to get in a car accident, among other negative effects.
How can they possibly know this? You'd have to know precisely when each person in the sample was infected, so you could compare accident rates before and afterward. (Otherwise it might just be the case that cat owners tend to be accident prone.) You'd need to set up an experiment where you infected half the people with it and then employed them all as taxi drivers.
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Otherwise it might just be the case that cat owners tend to be accident prone
An equal possibility is that cat owners have subconsciously lost the will to live and seek ways to die, no longer wishing to be the subjects of their capricious and mysteriously malevolent overlords.
I'm a cat owner. And suddenly I have a desire to go for a drive. *yawn*
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Only one in ten Americans have that disease, where two in three Brazilians do. Wikipedia didn't give numbers for other countries, but I would imagine Europe and Australia have similar numbers to the US.
Cats, domesticated ?? (Score:5, Funny)
BS.
I've got one on my desk right now proving it certainly isn't domesticated. She's trying to eat everything in sight. Our other one has previously chewed right through my phone charging cable.
The difference between cats and dogs:
A dog thinks: You feed me, you house me, you look after me. You must be a god.
A cat thinks: You feed me, you house me, you look after me. I must be a god.
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My dad's cat was really misbehaving. But I've spent a lot of time with her and she's calmed down quite a bit. Playing with them regularly helps keep them in line. If they're properly entertained they seem, to me, to be all around easier on you/your things. There's other stuff, etc
Re:Cats, domesticated ?? (Score:5, Funny)
In other words, the cat trained you through negative reinforcement.
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That, indeed, was the advice of a cat behaviorist in, where else, California. I was channel surfing one day and was amazed that a person could have that amount of metal stuff sticking into and out of his body. I presume he thought they complimented his tats. Anyhow, he visited a home with a cat that was tearing up the place. After observation, he concluded the cat felt unappreciated and stymied in its effort to express itself physically...errr...or something. Anyhow, he instituted daily walks (on a leash) a
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Wait, you mean most humans don't lick themselves already? Fascinating....
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The same goes for most dog behavior problems. Beagles and other hounds have a bad reputation for howling, digging and general destructiveness. Two walks a day will take care of that in most cases. Letting a scent hound out in the yard to sniff around the same place he's sniffed the last ten days in a row frustrates him terribly.
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Could that be the cause of them being anti-housebroken, too? Sincere question. My mother's pugs will go for walks and play outside for hours and hours without event. Then, within 30 seconds of being inside the house, will drop a deuce in the middle of the living room (usually or near the exact same spot). I always assumed they were just being dicks.
No kidding. (Score:2)
"Cats have been part of human society for nearly 10,000 years, but they weren't always string-chasers and lap-sitters.
If you believe in evolution, this isn't exactly news.
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Uh, if you believe in evolution, you understand that cats have been essentially the same species for 10,000 years.
Now, if you believe in adaptive behavior through breeding, you believe in adaptive behavior through breeding. Which has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution involves species divergence, not merely 'change' of a single species.
Sensation! (Score:4, Funny)
"Cat bones unearthed in a 5000-year-old Chinese farming village indicate that the animals consumed rodents "
Finally, that burning question "do cats eat mice?' can finally be laid to rest.
Cats do eat mice!
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Cats do eat mice!
I call bullshit. A quick study of my cats showed they only eat bacon, expensive cables and human toes. Given the a living mouse and they run away.
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I'm in between Siamese terrorists. Of my last two, neither had any mousing instruction, I got them at 6 weeks old and unless the house was overrun with mice, there was never time for the Cat Mother to teach them. Ariel was a natural mouser, Tinkerbell not quite as good but she was the runt of the litter and deferred to Ariel when a mouse snuck into the house. My only complaint was they always left me the bottom half. After all that food and attention, I thought I deserved the top half every now and again.
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Re:Sensation! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ya, I'd recommend Siamese to anyone, but I'm unsure what happens if you do not get them as kittens. Kittens will bond to you at 6-7 weeks. My Siamese wanted to be near me whenever I was at home, climbing on me, curling up, anything to get close. I guess they are more talkative than the average moggie. Mine lived to 17 years, and I was heartbroken when they went to the Great Food Bowl in the Sky.
The oddest thing happened during their last days. Tinkerbell was on her last life and would curl up near my face at night with her head on my arm. Ariel slept down at the foot where they both usually slept until Tinkerbell got sick. The last night Tinkerbell was with us (I had planned to take her in for the final vet visit the following day, she was really near the end), Ariel came up and was inconsolable, stayed near Tinkerbell that whole night side by side. The following night, when Tinkerbell was no more, Ariel came up and cuddled up just like Tinkerbell had done.
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Cats do eat mice!
Mine likes chasing mice and bugs. Not killing them, mind you, just chasing them and certainly not eating them; Then looking at them menacingly while swishing its tail, daring them to make a run for it (again). My evidence shows that cats eat only Catnip, Chicken flavoured poultry & treats, and a special fowl flavoured cat-food formulated for urinary heath. Contrary to popular belief, cats do not enjoy bird chasing. Birds are for barking, silly human. [youtube.com]
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TFW when searching the pet food aisle for Iams Mouse-flavored cat food.
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A few years ago I moved to a new place and needed to line up a new home for a very sweet stray cat who had turned up on my doorstep. So he went to live with my Mom in the country.
At first he was puzzled by his new surroundings, but eventually he figured things out. It took him about six weeks to go from playing with mice the other cat brought in, to catching his own and playing with them, to discovering they were edible. And much tastier than cat food. Crunch crunch crunch.
...laura
They weren't petting animals until recently? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They weren't petting animals until recently? (Score:5, Funny)
There is no proof we have actually been domesticating cats as petting animals for more than a few hundred years. Until the 19th century or so
Quick now, Jeeves, fetch the net! I've spotted a rare young-earth Egyptianist. [wikipedia.org]
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Thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, cats were worshipped treated as gods.
Cats, have never forgotten this.
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There is no proof we have actually been domesticating cats as petting animals for more than a few hundred years.
The proof comes from ancient Egypt and (AFAIR) Mespotamia, where cat remains are found with collars round their necks. The collars cannot be for tethering as a tethered cat would be no use either for petting or hunting (ever tried tethering a cat?), the collars are for decoration and identifying ownership. Also, mummified cats are found in the tombs of kings, queens and other aristrocrats, who are unlikely to have concerned themselves with cats in the context of rat catching.
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There is no proof we have actually been domesticating cats as petting animals for more than a few hundred years. Until the 19th century or so, these were just semi-wild animals that got access to our barns and homes to kill rodents, but they would claw you the moment you tried to touch them.
Please mod this back down to oblivion. How about medieval paintings of young children holding their pet cats? How about egyptian art of cats at the feet of the kings or priests? Any cat that is cold will find someplace warm to sleep, which is why laps are often chosen. Cats chose the people, not the other way around.
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Until the 19th century or so, these were just semi-wild animals that got access to our barns and homes to kill rodents, but they would claw you the moment you tried to touch them.
Citation BADLY needed, wikipedia disagrees with you completely (it also says that this "news" is 14 years old).
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I don't doubt there have always been the occasional tamed and made-a-pet cat, more or fewer depending on the culture (as someone pointed out re ancient Egypt). But on the whole, you're right -- in fact it's only been the last 50 years or so in the American farming midwest that more than the occasional kitten was made into a pet. The vast majority worked for a living, in the barns and fields, and unless tamed young, yeah, they're NOT pets, nor can most be made into pets later.
Conversely, most dogs that are n
We domesticated, not them (Score:2, Funny)
As many point out, the cats have it good in most homes. But I think dogs have it better. The stereotype is that dogs are dumb and cats are smart. Well, dogs are the ones who have an entourage (us) following them around and picking up their poop. Think about it. We pick up their POOP. We literally wait for them to finish pooping, then we (with a bag only a few hundredths of a millimeter thick) stoop to pick up their poop and we carry it until we get home to put in in our trash. Any other owner/pet rel
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Jerry Seinfeld had a joke that visiting aliens would think that dogs ruled the planet for that very reason.
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I guess it could go either way. Dogs go wherever they want and the human has to pick it up. Cats at least keep it to a box.
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Um, not really. I'm not a cat person, but even I have to admit that cats also work. TFA even makes this point -- that cats were domesticated to kill vermin. A task they still perform today.
Our last cat, though, what a slacker. He'd wait for the trap to SNAP and then steal the payload. Or, about half of it.
Cats and editor religious wars (Score:5, Funny)
While I agree that competent users of vi or emacs can all do the same things, I feel that the major difference between the two is related to what happens when a cat walks on the keyboard.
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write reports and research papers for me.
No. They'd go on line and download copyrighted music, order kiddie porn and the components for IEDs on your credit card.
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write reports and research papers for me.
No. They'd go on line and download copyrighted music, order kitty porn and the components for IEDs on your credit card.
FTFY
44 posts in thread so far and no mention of... (Score:1)
perspective (Score:2)
> Ancient felines hunted crop-destroying rats and mice for early farmers, and in return we provided food and protection.
> In case city dwellers get the wrong idea, felines hut crop-destroying rats and mice for current farmers, also. Everyone works on a farm, including the pets.
My cat likes to fetch sticks (Score:1)
Yep, he fetches. Drinks out of the toilet. Chases other cats.
He's a dog in a cat suit, I think.
Just waiting for his meow to come out as a bark, one day.
Cats, when when properly acclimated, (Score:2)
... are just as companionable as dogs.
My personally belief is that cats are not truly personable and domestic unless they are free to enter and leave the house on their own terms.
Dogs typically are not allowed to do this as they will cause all kinds of problems in the neighborhood unless restricted. Dogs are cool with such restrictions as they MUST be trained to heel for basic civility.... They also require a lot more direct intervention from the host for their domesticity.
Cats, on the other hand, only n