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PETS | Fabulous felines
protecting or sled pulling. They already
possessed naturally what they were useful for:
their predatory skills as pest control agents.
And this is what made them useful to human
communities in the first place.”
But something interesting happened
when these cats, like our Cyprus cat, started
to explore the world. While cats tolerated
being around humans in the Fertile Crescent,
they were far from being the lap cats we
know today.
Dr Claudio’s
team believe
that cats were
domesticated
twice.
“Something
changed at
some point
in the cats’
behaviour; we
argue this might
have happened
in Egypt. Cats
developed a
more friendly
attitude towards
humans. They
just had to
become more
tolerant of
humans so that
they could be seen as cute companion animals
and enter humans’ households,” he says.
It’s likely that companion animals, like the
humble house cat, have more secrets to share
and Dr Claudio says that it’s important to
continue feeding our curiosity. “Our research
responds to our need to look into the past, to
look at the evolutionary paths that made us
humans. This includes understanding the deep
interactions with the animal species that we
domesticated,” he says. “This is even more true
when we talk about cats. They have conquered
our households as mere companions, they are
definitely part of our collective consciousness,
hence the importance and extreme curiosity in
understanding how this intimate relationship
developed.”to understanding the path to domestication.
“The study of animal domestication in
bioarchaeology and in particular in paleogenetics
has been already under the spotlight for quite
some time,” says paleogeneticist Dr Claudio
Ottoni. “Our research was aimed to fi ll this gap,
to provide a picture about how cats were so
successful in spreading from a relatively small
place — the domestication centres in the Near
East, and later Egypt — to the whole world.”
Dr Claudio’s research is the most
comprehensive survey of cat DNA to date
and it’s heralded surprising results. “House
cats are domestic animals, though their
domestication pathway was quite peculiar,
unconventional,” he says. “Cats were never
selected to accomplish tasks like hunting,http://www.petsmagazine.com.au
The Siamese is thought to be another wild, naturally produced cat.Wild breedsWild breeds
Paleogeneticist Dr Claudio says
that the wildest naturally produced
domestic cats may be Asian breeds
like the Korat and the Siamese. “They
are most likely the result of natural
factors acting on populations of cats
that were once transported to more
remote regions of Asia,” he says. “These
cats remained isolated and did not
crossbreed with other cats introduced
later or native cat populations.”PLF071_pg042-044_History of Cats.indd 44PLF071_pg042-044_History of Cats.indd 44 8/23/2017 10:46:22 AM8/23/2017 10:46:22 AM