Posted on 03/08/2021 3:23:59 PM PST by C19fan
omestication of animals was an amazing feat that changed human relationships with the natural world.
But while a Pomeranian looks nothing like a wolf, a thoroughbred jump horse looks nothing like a wild pony, and a potbellied pig looks nothing like a black boar, ‘domestic’ house cats look pretty much exactly like wild cats.
That’s because they domesticated themselves—not through form, but through function, and research reveals that wildcat ancestors share essentially the same genetics as house cats today.
(Excerpt) Read more at goodnewsnetwork.org ...
Can we renegotiate with the cats? I think we got the short end of the stick.
Actually, cougars are the largest of the small cats. They purr and will meow, which actual big cats do not do.
Ever watch a house cat dribble a mouse. Whappity, whappity, wham. Imagine a mountain lion or a bigger cousin playing a game with you. Wham! Game over. :)
So would your dog, if it needed to.
Cats are God’s perfect killing machines...but they only weigh eight pounds and people keep picking them up and telling them how cute they are.
Quiet, puny hooman, you were domesticated by cats to serve them.
Since 1972 all of our cats have been strays. Now there is the occasional stray that I cannot catch. Some have been mistreated so badly by people that you cannot get near them. But we have caught and invited into our home.... strays.... Some we kept, some went to live with our daughter, friends, our sons....
Gretchen, first stray we loved in our home 1972.
Ginger,
Georgie.
Albo,
Ollie,
Kirby,
Wyck,
Sambo,
Spot,
Graybaby,
Squirt,
Gina,
Logan,
Paolo,
Lily,
Oscar,
Heath,
Cha Cha,
Charlie,
Stripey,
Stella,
Fluffy,
Piccadilly,
Pinkie Pie,
Jezabelle,
Carl,
Stinky,
Jasmine,
Hope I didn’t forget anyone!
There have been a couple we could not get close to. Right now there is the mother of Fluffy and Stripey, still being allusive. She is also the sister of Lily.
They way our son caught Lily was a trap in his backyard. Took several tries over several days. She is a sweet shy housecat now living in luxury at his house.
>>Can the author guess why nobody wanted to live indoors with a cougar?
Because they are hell on a couch when they sharpen their claws?
We could share a tent, maybe?
Happened many years ago, that's why so much manufacturing is done is China...
Those three could survive quite well without us.
OTOH, our species will have a few very sincere mourners, several types of lice can only live on humans...
LMAO! My black cat Merlyn “pets” my face and head like that-usually when he wants either more attention or a bite of my dinner...
Regarding cats scooping their own litter boxes.
My friend taught his cat to perch on the toilet seat, do its business, then claw a rope attached to the flush handle. Don’t know his training method.
Yeah, we have a couple of cats like that. Always saying something without saying something, you know what I mean?
Humans and chimps have 98% identical DNA. Why don’t we look twice as similar as do tigers and housecats with 96% sameness?
Because we wouldn't -- it's 98.8%, while the kittehs named there are 96%, a difference of 2.8%, which isn't twice as much. The New World primates have a number of common characteristics, but their chromosome counts vary widely. Chimps/bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons each have 24 chromosome pairs, compared with 23 chromosome pairs for (most) humans.
Humans were *believed* to have 24 chromosome pairs until *after* the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. Some nimrod had declared the count, and no one had ever gone back and checked the work, presumably because it fit the narrative of Upchuck Darwin.
"For thirty years, nobody disputed this 'fact'. One group of scientists abandoned their experiments on human liver cells because they could only find twenty-three pairs of chromosomes in each cell. Another researcher invented a method of separating the chromosomes, but still he thought he saw twenty-four pairs. It was not until 1955, when an Indonesian named Joe-Hin Tjio travelled from Spain to Sweden to work with Albert Levan, that the truth dawned. Tjio and Levan, using better techniques, plainly saw twenty-three pairs. They even went back and counted twenty-three pairs in photographs in books where the caption stated that there were twenty-four pairs. There are none so blind as do not wish to see." (Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, p 23-24)
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