Cat Gaming Because Murder is Wrong Shirt
‘Blotched’ tabby cat genes became more common alongside striped ‘mackerel’ patterns in the later Middle Ages. Ottoni et al., 2017/Nature, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Author providedOver the next 800 years, domestic cats spread further into northern Europe. But it wasn’t until the 18th century that the traditional “mackerel” coat of the wildcat began to change in substantial numbers to the blotched pattern that we see in many modern tabbies. This suggests that, at that time, serious efforts to breed cats for appearance began – perhaps the origin of modern cat shows.Another interesting finding is that domestic cats from earliest times, when moved around by humans to new parts of the world, promptly mated with local wildcats and spread their genes through the population. And, in the process, they permanently changed the gene pool of cats in the area.This has particular relevance to today’s efforts to protect the endangered European wildcat, because conservationists often think interbreeding with domestic cats is one of the greatest threats to the species. If this has been happening all over the old world for the past 9,000 or so years, then perhaps it’s time to stop worrying about wildcats breeding with local moggies. This study suggests that none of the existing species of non-domesticated cats is likely to be pure. In fact, cats’ ability to interbreed has helped them conquer the world.
Cat Gaming Because Murder is Wrong Shirt
The modern cat (Felis silvestris catus) is descended from one or more of four or five separate wild cats: the Sardinian wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), the European wildcat (F. s. silvestris), the Central Asian wildcat (F.s. ornata), the sub-Saharan African wildcat (F.s. cafra), and (perhaps) the Chinese desert cat (F.s. bieti). Each of these species is a distinctive subspecies of F. silvestris, but F.s. lybica was ultimately domesticated and is an ancestor of all modern domesticated cats. Genetic analysis suggests that all domestic cats derive from at least five founder cats from the Fertile Crescent region, from where they (or rather their descendants) were transported around the world.Researchers analyzing cat mitochondrial DNA have identified evidence that F.s. lybica was distributed across Anatolia from the early Holocene (ca. 11,600 years ago) at the latest. The cats found their way into southeastern Europe before the onset of farming in the Neolithic. They suggest that cat domestication was a complex long-term process, because people took cats with them on overland and ship-board trade facilitating admixture events between geographically separated F.s. lybica and other wild subspecies like F.S. ornata at different times.
