I mean, this is straight up not true. The closest truly wild house cat is a weirdo that looks like a lanky house cat, and house cat brains are physically smaller and dumber than wild ones. Also need I point out how cats also have their pug versions complete with health issues normal cats don't have?
The thing I think is most interesting about cat domestication is that wild cats do not meow and a domesticated cat's meow is at a similar frequency as the cry of a human baby.
Actually, current estimates shows us dog domestication happened some time around 30000 years ago while cats were domesticated at the dawn of human civilizations, around 12000 years ago, so less than 20000 years of difference. Also, dogs were domesticated in multiple regions at different times, whereas cats are exclusive to two domestication events. I'm open to evidence of the contrary, of course.
Same, my rescued, fully indoors cat is the smartest non-primate animal I've ever seen. They can clearly understand some sentences, subtle body language, and they're the cutest manipulators you'll ever see, knowing exactly how to get me to stay by their side for "only 5 more minutes".
They didn't just come inside. They also infected us with brain parasites that makes us like cats, and learnt to meow in specific frequencies that make us treat them like human babies...
They also helped keep grain stores free from vermin that would otherwise have cost countless lives throughout history. Our ancestors knew damn well why they wanted to keep them around.
Cat domestication is mainly about making them small enough so that when they randomly decide to slap your face with their clawed paws you wouldn't die.
Domestic cats aren't shrunken down big cats, the cats we take into our homes were always this size. They originated from Felis Silvestris Lybica, a species from Egypt and North Africa... Which look fairly similar to just regular cats.
Toxoplasma gondii, which needs to reproduce in felines, can infect any warm blooded animal. It's been observed to increase risk taking behaviour which could have helped to contribute to the development of human society.
Well, they certainly helped keep our granaries pest-free.
(Also, when people started killing cats instead of rats it probably had quite negative consequences for civilization... though, to be fair, the black death probably set the right circumstances for the rise of the middle class, and the renaissance... so lose some win some, I suppose.)
I've heard the argument for this but I suspect that humans don't have domesticated traits, its that domestication imbunes animals with human social traits. Which makes sense since the whole point is to make them get along with us.
My brain just went down a rabbit hole of of breeds vs strays and whether it's fucked or not and how the world would look if people treated cat breeding like they did dog breeding and how things would change.
Both cats and dogs are bred a lot and not to the animal's advantage. Though I guess dog breeding and its disadvantages are a little more prominent and known than cat breeding is. Correct me if I'm wrong
I mean, the cuter an animal is the more humans want it. Pugs might have health issues, but selective breeding has certainly made them very popular. That is, to the animals advantage.
Foxes dont follow a hierarchical system like dogs, cats or horses where there is an Alpha (the owner of the animal) whom they fall under in the pecking order.
Foxes like to shit and piss all over everything and burrow Into couches. Good luck with the fox thing.
No offense to anyone who has a cat, but one of the reasons I have dogs is that they'll probably wait until they get really hungry before they decide to eat your face if you die at home alone.
Sphynx cats have an interesting origin story. Canadian scientists took cats with the genetic defect of hairlessness and began breeding them back in the 60s to create the new breed of the Sphynx.