Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Domestication of Cats (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. Dogs and cats are both domesticated, four-legged, fur-bearing mammals. And beyond that, they don't really have a whole lot in common. One of the things that they don't have in common is how they wound up in the lives of humans. Cats establish their relationship with humans at a totally different point in history and for totally different reasons. Learn more about the domestication of cats and how these wild animals wound up as pets on this episode of Everything Everywhere Day. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:58 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. To understand domesticated cats, you first have to understand the animal that they came from, the wild cat. Wild cats are cats that look very similar to some domesticated cats. They are roughly the same size, and if you saw a wild cat out in the wild, you might assume that it was just a domesticated cat that was on the loose. Taxonomically, cats are members of the family, Philidae.

Starting point is 00:01:35 Philaday has three genera. The first genus is Panthera, which consists of all the large cats that can roar. These include lions, tigers, leopards, snow leopards, clouded leopards, and jaguars. The second genus is Aeonics, which consists of only cheetahs. And the third and final genus is Phelis, which consists of all smaller cats, including wildcats. Wildcats consist of two species, the African wildcat and the European wildcat. Both cats look similar to each other, and there are multiple subspecies of wildcat,

Starting point is 00:02:08 which are located all over Africa, the Middle East, parts of Iran, India, Central Asia, China, and Europe. Some taxonomists do consider the various subspecies to be different species. but it's hard to create a hard division because where wildcat subspecies interact, they tend to breed with each other. Wildcats, as you can probably guess, are silent hunters that prey on small animals such as rodents and birds.

Starting point is 00:02:33 The story of how wild cats ended up living with humans is a very different story than that of dogs. Dog domestication predates cat domestication by thousands of years. While the first dogs may have wandered close to humans for food, humans ultimately took an active role in domesticating dogs to use them in hunting, security, and as pack animals. If you remember back to my episode on the domestication of dogs, dogs may have come into the lives of humans about 20 to 40,000

Starting point is 00:03:00 years ago. The story of cats and humans is much more recent. It didn't have anything to do with humans as hunters. Rather, it had everything to do with humans as farmers. As humans began to grow crops, in particular grain, they had to store it. This was one of the principal benefits of agriculture. grain could be stored for months or years to be consumed at a later date to even out bad harvest. The growing and storing of grain attracted wild animals that feasted on it. This included animals such as rats, mice, and birds. Agriculture caused an explosion in the population of rats and mice as it provided a very large and abundant food source. These pests weren't welcomed by humans as they not only stole food but could ruin entire harvest and spread disease.

Starting point is 00:03:44 With the rats and mice came their arch-enemy, Wildcats. Wildcats found farms to be just as good of a source of food as rats and mice did, but for totally different reasons. Cats didn't begin their relationship with humans by humans giving them food like with dogs. It began with cats simply finding farms to be good hunting grounds. Cats hunted the creatures that ate farm crops, which put their interests directly in line with humans. DNA evidence has shown that all domestic cats came from the African wildcat species known as Phyllis Silvestris Leibica, which is found in North Africa in the Middle East. Exactly when cats began their relationship with humans is still an open question,

Starting point is 00:04:27 but the answer appears to be around 10,000 years ago, approximately around the same time that humans began adopting agriculture in the fertile crescent. The first grain stores date back about 10,000 years and were found in Israel. The first evidence of cats and humans dates back around 9,500 years ago. A grave site was found on the island of Cyprus that had a cat skeleton very close to a human skeleton. This is significant because Cyprus is an island and had no native population of wild cats. If cats were in Cyprus, then humans must have taken them there. One of the current theories about the domestication of cats is that humans never actually domesticated cats.

Starting point is 00:05:08 Cats domesticated themselves. For thousands of years, cats simply lived alongside humans. Humans and their farms provided a rich hunting ground for cats, and cats provided a useful service for humans. It was a symbiotic relationship that both parties benefited from, but cats wouldn't have been living in houses and jumping up on your lap. These cats could be considered tame more than domesticated. The actual domestication of cats probably occurred only about 4,500 to 3,500 years ago in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians revered cats. They really love them, and given how much their society was dependent upon the production of grain, it makes total sense. Several gods in the Egyptian pantheon were portrayed as cats or were given feline features, including Maphdet, Bastet, and Sechmet, the gods of justice, fertility, and power. Cats were valued not only for killing rodents,

Starting point is 00:06:02 but for killing venomous snakes and protecting the pharaoh. Cats were also mummified and buried with their owners as a sign of respect and devotion. The ancient Egyptians believed that cats had special powers and were able to communicate with the spirit world. As such, cats were often included in religious ceremonies and were believed to help guide the souls of the dead to the afterlife. Mummified cats began appearing in royal tomb starting with the 12th dynasty about 3,700 to 4,000 years ago.

Starting point is 00:06:29 In the 19th century, over 200,000 mummified cats were found in a cemetery in Benny Hassan in central Egypt. Cats were able to spread rapidly to other cultures because they were brought on board ships to kill rats. They would then either be traded or find new hunting grounds in other warehouses and in port cities. Domesticated cats were first introduced in Greece around 1,200 BC, as they were spread by Greek and Phoenician traders around the Mediterranean. The Greeks used to keep weasels as pets to catch mice, but switched to cats because they were better hunters and better pets. The Romans had no cat gods like the Egyptians did, but they also held cats in high animals. esteem for similar reasons. The cat was a symbol of liberty and independence to the Romans.

Starting point is 00:07:13 Cats were actually prized all over the world. In China, cats were prized for their ability to protect manuscripts from rodents. In Norse mythology, the goddess Freya is depicted as writing a chariot being pulled by cats. In Japan, cats are considered to be good luck, and the Menecki Neko, a porcelain cat with a swivel arm, can often be found at the counters in shops and restaurants. In Islam, cats have always been given a position of respect. According to the Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad prohibited the killing of cats. One of Muhammad's early allies, Abu Saeed, supposedly had a cat that saved Muhammad from a venomous snake. And Muhammad himself may have also had a pet cat named Muiza. In the Middle Ages, European attitudes towards cats

Starting point is 00:07:55 began to change. They started to be associated with witchcraft and the devil. Burning cats alive became an actual form of entertainment. And perhaps not surprisingly, this coincided with the rise of pandemics such as the bubonic plague, which was spread by rats. There were no members of the genus Phelis in the Americas, so there were no wildcats.

Starting point is 00:08:17 However, it has been proposed that some Native Americans may have domesticated bobcats. There are people who have domesticated bobcats, which behave like much larger housecats. The domestication of bobcats theory is far from universally accepted, even though it appears to be technically possible. Many countries have a tradition that says cats have nine lives. However, in other countries

Starting point is 00:08:40 like Italy, Germany, Greece, and Brazil, it's said that cats have seven lives, and in the Arab world it's common to say cats have six lives. The association with cats and multiple lives comes from their speed and agility, which allows them to escape dangerous situations, and also from their seeming ability to always land on their feet. Depending on who you talk to, there are between 45 and 70 different breeds of domesticated cats in the world today. The process of selectively breeding cats for particular attributes, something which has been done with dogs for thousands of years, may have only begun about 500 years ago.

Starting point is 00:09:16 Long-haired cat breeds such as Persians are thought to have originated in either Western Afghanistan or Iran. There is only documented evidence for them dating back to the 17th century. Hairless breeds such as Sphinx cats are very modern, with most breeds only having been established in the later half of the 20th century. The global domesticated cat population is estimated to be around 500 million, but that number is difficult to estimate because there are so many feral cats. Feral cats are a much bigger problem than feral dogs.

Starting point is 00:09:48 Because of how they were domesticated, cats can still hunt their own food and have retained many of their natural instincts. In fact, even though many cat owners don't realize it, domesticated cats still hunt and kill a large number of mice and songbirds. In many places around the world, the introduction of cats has resulted in the extinction of species, often quite rapidly. At least 20 native mammal species in Australia have gone extinct due to the introduction of cats. In New Zealand, birds such as the South Island Pio Pio, the Chatham Rail, and the New Zealand Murganser have all gone extinct,

Starting point is 00:10:22 largely due to the introduction of domesticated cats. In just the United States, In just the United States alone, an estimated 75 million cats are responsible for the deaths of 1.3 to 3.7 billion birds and 6.3 to 22.3 billion mammals every year. These aren't just feral cats that are responsible. Almost any domesticated cat which goes outdoors is probably hunting. A study of feral cat populations in California found that even when feral cats are fed, they still continue to hunt as they did before, as their hunting is instinctual, not necessarily driven by hunger. Cat hunting can have downstream effects as well. In Maryland, one study found that cats hunting chipmunks, which is the primary food source of the Cooper's Hawk, resulted in decreased

Starting point is 00:11:10 hawk populations. Attempts at introducing cats to control rat populations in cities like New York have largely failed because rats are large and can put up a fight. So cats just tend to focus on songbirds and other native species, or just eat garbage. Sir David Attenborough has suggested that British cat owners just tie a bell to the collar of their cats to make it difficult for them to hunt birds. There have been many jokes about the relationship between cats and humans. It's been said that there's no such thing as a truly domesticated cat or that cats actually domesticated humans, not the other way around. And there's actually a kernel of truth in those jokes. Cats weren't domesticated like dogs or horses. They lost.

Starting point is 00:11:51 largely lived alongside humans for thousands of years in a symbiotic relationship where they hunted pests on our behalf. It wasn't until much later that they were brought indoors and made part of our families. However, domesticated cats are not that different from wildcats. Even though they may purr and cuddle up next to you, they still have the instincts of a super predator. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone. who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day.

Starting point is 00:12:32 And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Domestication of Cats (Encore)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.