As we've all been spending lots more time at home, I'm sure we've all come to realize that at least some are benefitting from our time staying in: our pets.
My cat Gertie is blissfully unaware of the global pandemic -- happy to get extra pets and treats, spend all of the days outside, and explore all the weird new things I've brought home to help me work from home. She even shows up to help with some FPAN projects when she can fit it into her busy schedule between naps and stalking wind-blown leaves.
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| Gertie hard at work, supervising video edits. |
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| Yep, hard at work. |
So how did we end up with these cute and sometime useless fuzzy creatures living in our houses? Cats have been with us humans for thousands of years - and moved across continents and oceans with us. It's estimated that cat domestication happened sometime between 10,000 - 12,000 years ago. Modern domestic cats are all descendants of
Felis silvestris, small wildcats from the Old World. There are quite of few subspecies of these felines found throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. Recent research on cat genetics shows they are most closely related to the
lybica subspecies, also known as the Middle Eastern wildcat.
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| Range of wildcat species. From Driscoll et al 2009. |
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| That's no house cat! That's Felis silvestris lybica - the Middle Eastern wildcat. From Grimm 2009. |
Archaeological evidence supports this genetic research as some of the earliest evidence of domesticated cats is found in Cyprus. One site, dating back around 9,500 years ago, even featured a cat buried next to a human.
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| 9,500 year old burial of a human and a cat (circled in blue) found in Cyprus. From Driscoll et al 2009. |
The first domesticated cats made it to North America aboard ships with colonists. Archaeologists have found the remains of cats in 16th century Spanish deposits from downtown St. Augustine as well as at 17th century British colonies like Jamestown and Charleston. Cats were welcomed addition to ships as vermin control and many must have gotten off when the voyage ended in the new world.
A lot of researchers have wondered why humans would domesticate cats. I'm going to leave it to Driscoll et al, who worded it best in the introduction to their article, "The Taming of the Cat:"
"The aloof and elusive nature of cats is perhaps their most distinctive feature, endearing to some and exasperating to others. Despite its mercurial tendencies, the house cat is the most popular pet in the world. A third of American households have feline members, and more than 600 million cats live among humans worldwide. Yet as familiar as these animals are, a complete understanding of their origins has proved elusive. Whereas other once wild animals were domesticated for their milk, meat, wool or labor, cats contribute virtually nothing in the way of sustenance or work. How, then, did they become fixtures in our homes?"
The answer could be that cats domesticated themselves, figuring hanging around us humans made for easier scavenging and hunting opportunities. And the humans might not have minded too much because of the pest control. However cats ended up domesticated, I'm glad to be stuck with this one while I work away at home.
Words and images of Gertie by Emily Jane Murray, FPAN staff. Research on domesticated cats and additional graphics (see captions for specific sources) from: "The Taming of the Cat," Driscoll et al 2009; "The genes that turned wildcats into kitty cats," Grimm 2009; "Faunal Evidence for Sixteenth Century Spanish Subsistence at St. Augustine, Florida," Reitz 1985;
