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The Domestication of Cats

Traditional theories held that humans domesticated wild animals by capturing and selectively breeding them over generations. However, new research suggests animals played an active role by adapting to live near human settlements for access to food. Domestication was a cooperative process between humans and animals, rather than humans dominating animals. While cats seem to fit this framework by living near farms for rodents, studies find wildcats avoid people and don't share territories, so it's unclear if they actively helped their own domestication like wolves or horses may have.

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162 views1 page

The Domestication of Cats

Traditional theories held that humans domesticated wild animals by capturing and selectively breeding them over generations. However, new research suggests animals played an active role by adapting to live near human settlements for access to food. Domestication was a cooperative process between humans and animals, rather than humans dominating animals. While cats seem to fit this framework by living near farms for rodents, studies find wildcats avoid people and don't share territories, so it's unclear if they actively helped their own domestication like wolves or horses may have.

Uploaded by

Tini Alvarado
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Domestication of Cats


For centuries, the common view of how domestication had occurred was that prehistoric people, realizing how useful it
would be to have captive herds of food animals, began capturing wild animals and breeding them. Over time, by allowing
only animals with "tame" characteristics to mate and produce offspring, human beings created animals that were less wild
and more dependent upon people. Eventually this process led to the domestic farm animals and pets that we know today,
many of which would fare quite badly in the wild, having lost their ancient survival skills and instincts.
Recent research suggests that this view of domestication is incomplete. Prehistoric human beings did capture and breed
useful wild animals, and those species became tamer over time (they generally changed physically, too, developing larger
bodies and smaller brains than their wild cousins). But specialists in animal behaviour now think that domestication was
not simply something people did to animals - the animals played an active part in the process. Wolves and wild horses, for
example, may have taken the first steps in their own domestication by hanging around human settlements, feeding on
people's garbage and crops and getting used to human presence and activity. Individual animals that were not too nervous
or fearful to live near people produced offspring that also tolerated humans, making it easier for people to capture and
tame them.
In this version, people succeeded in domesticating only animals that had already adapted easily to life around humans.
Domestication required an animal that was willing to become domestic. The process was more like a dance with two
partners than a triumph of humans over animals.
At first glance, the taming of cats seems to fit nicely into this new story of domestication. A traditional theory says that
after prehistoric people in the Near East and Egypt invented agriculture and started farming, rats and mice gathered to
feast on their stored grain. Wildcats, in turn, gathered at the same places to prey on the rats and mice. Over time, cats got
used to people and people got used to cats, until at some point cats were tame. New studies of wildcats, however, seem to
call this theory into question. Wildcats don't share hunting and feeding territories, and they don't live close to people or
seek out human settlements as food sources. Experts do not know whether wildcats were partners in their own
domestication. They do know that long after people had acquired domestic dogs, sheep, goats. cattle, and horses, they
somehow acquired tame cats. By mating the least aggressive cats with one another, they produced animals with
increasingly tame qualities.
1. According to traditional theories of domestication, how were wild animals tamed?

a) selective breeding
b) capturing only smaller animals
c) aggression and control

2. What is suggested in the new theory?

a) that animals were less afraid than thought


b) that wolves and horses were the first to be domesticated
c) that animals had an active role in their domestication

3. Why is the word "dance" used in the 3rd paragraph?

a) that animals and humans were close


b) there were two active partners
c) that it was complex and not simple to understand

4. What probably attracted cats to human settlements?

a) warmth
b) other cats
c) food

5. What characteristic of the cat causes a problem for the theory that cats were domesticated like wolves were?

a) independence
b) greed
c) friendliness

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