Certainly the lions and the tigers resemble big cats, and they have with our Matous a common ancestor, but how did we go from wild predators that they were at one time, with kittens rolled in ball in front of the radiator? If they were indeed always smaller than their cousins, cats were, at one time, just as wild as they are. How and why have they become our pets?
The man began to domesticate cats about 10,000 years ago. The Live Science scientific magazine reports that it is the race Felistris Lybica, a subspecies of Africa and the Middle East, initially wild, which would have started to frequent humans at that time. Genes of these cats were found in Europe, Africa and the Middle East on archaeological sites.
These discoveries, made in 2009 and republished by the National Library of Medicine, came to contradict our initial beliefs, presupposing that cats were first tamed by the Egyptians 3,600 years ago. A supposition undoubtedly influenced by the sacred place entrusted to the animal in culture and in religion at that time. The domestication of the cat would therefore be much older and linked to a close collaboration with humans.
The cat, domestic and wild at the same time
Research suggests that the propagation of pet cats would be partly due to the merchants who won them with them on their ships. No question of resting, cats were used to hunt rats, real wounds for sailors and their goods. In exchange, the felines, themselves, enjoyed the remains of food left by the crews. Once returned to earth, animals obviously continued their work as mouse hunters and have reinforced their place of useful domestic animals. The 2009 study identified the existence of 600 million pets worldwide.
But are cats really domesticated? Barely, researchers say. Domestic cat breeding only began the last century; Very recently therefore, especially in comparison with dogs, which have been raised by humans for thousands of years.
This partly explains the independence of cats, much less docile than dogs. These little felines have further anchored certain ancestral wild instincts in them. It is undoubtedly for this reason that they sometimes disappear for long days without giving news, before returning to rush on a soft cushion, independence has limits.
