First Hard Evidence for the Process of Cat Domestication

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First Hard Evidence for the Process of Cat Domestication

Posted by Unknown on Monday December 16, 2013 @08:04PM from the mittens-will-eat-you-when-you-die dept.

sciencehabit writes "Cats have been part of human society for nearly 10,000 years, but they weren't always string-chasers and lap-sitters. Ancient felines hunted crop-destroying rats and mice for early farmers, and in return we provided food and protection. At least that's what scientists have long speculated. Now, they can back it up. Cat bones unearthed in a 5000-year-old Chinese farming village indicate that the animals consumed rodents and that some may have been cared for by humans. The findings provide the earliest hard evidence of this mutually beneficial relationship between man and cat."

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Backwards by AmiMoJo · 2013-12-16 20:14 · Score: 5, Funny

These guys have it the wrong way around. Humans didn't domesticate cats, cats domesticated humans. Within about half an hour of yge first cat realizing it could get foods and grooming from a human just by looking cute and rubbing against their legs every nowand then it made the human its servant and lived a life of leisure. I bet it never bothered to kill anything that wasn't within a law's length of it again.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
1. Re:Backwards by AmiMoJo · 2013-12-16 20:42 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I must apologize for the above post. I'd like to claim that a cat walked over my keyboard but the reality is that autocorrect did its usual amazing job.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
2. Re:Backwards by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2013-12-16 20:52 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  You may be more right than you think: a scientist has proposed the theory that toxoplasmosis carried by cats affects everything we feel and do.
  
  --
  "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
3. Re:Backwards by reboot246 · 2013-12-16 21:52 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Indeed. Cats don't have owners. They have staff.
4. Re:Backwards by demonlapin · 2013-12-17 00:56 · Score: 2
  
  Can you imagine a pack of modern house cat's successfully patrolling farmland?
  Yes. Easily. As a child, I had a cat that was a holy terror to squirrels and birds. 3-4 dead critters a week and he wasn't even doing it for food. He never ate them - just left the bodies there. Our other cat ate them. I had no doubt that he could provide for himself in the absence of us.
5. Re: Backwards by KiloByte · 2013-12-17 02:08 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Oh dear god, only the insane idiot would want to keep intact female cats. The incessant yowling will make you kill things.
  How is that different from human females? *duck*
  
  --
  The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
6. Re: Backwards by CubicleZombie · 2013-12-17 02:32 · Score: 2
  
  After I put in a cat door, my cat started bringing me mice "gifts" every morning. One day, she waited patiently outside my bathroom door with a live mouse in her jaws. As I stepped out of the shower, she bit a hole in its head and dropped the squirming mouse, blood spurting out of its skull, at my feet. Freshest gift ever.
  Nice kitty.
  I finally locked the cat door when she brought in a bird. Ugh.
  
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  :wq
7. Re: Backwards by operagost · 2013-12-17 02:51 · Score: 2
  
  That's the key-- outside on a farm. It's pretty much impossible to keep an unspayed female indoors.
  
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  Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
8. Re:Backwards by chaim79 · 2013-12-17 03:18 · Score: 2
  
  Can you imagine a pack of modern house cat's successfully patrolling farmland?
  Easily, because it's a common sight out in farmland. Maybe not so much in the big corporate farms but smaller family farms will usually have anywhere from a dozen to fifty or so cats running around the farm taking care of rats, mice, keeping 'coons and foxes at bay, etc. In fact, two of the cats I now have indoors, were born to barn cats and taken in while still kittens.
  
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  AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
  Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
9. Re: Backwards by dgatwood · 2013-12-17 03:38 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Sounds like you need a cat door that unlocks only when the cat isn't carrying anything.
  
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10. Re: Backwards by cusco · 2013-12-17 04:01 · Score: 2
  
  Told my cat he could hunt all the rodents he wanted (including some enormous rats), but if he ever brought home a bird that I'd beat him with it until the feathers fell off. Came home from work one day and found a dead robin on the kitchen floor. Called Tux in, closed the cat door behind him, and the chase was on. There were feathers from one end of the house to the other. He never brought home another bird, and I never even saw him stalking any after that.
  I eventually moved to Peru and gave him to a nice couple who lived out in the woods. Came back to the US a couple of years later and gave them a call to see how Tux was getting along. The lady said, "Oh, he's fine. We let him out in the evenings and he hunts mice all night and leaves them on the porch. When we let the dogs out in the morning they eat them."
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
11. Re:Backwards by mcgrew · 2013-12-17 06:10 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Only weak humans are domesticated by their cats. My cats obey my orders; they come when called and a sharply worded "OUT!" makes them leave the room. I once taught a cat to play dead when I pointed my finger at him and said "bang". You simply have to understand cat psychology and their instincts and other motivations.
  As to hunting, a cat doesn't consider hunting a job. To a cat, chasing things is the funnest thing in the world, even a laser pointer. My cat has made it clear that she understands where the red dot comes from, but she still likes to chase it (the other one is elderly and no longer plays).
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
Not entirely mutually beneficial... by tlambert · 2013-12-16 20:21 · Score: 4, Interesting

Not entirely mutually beneficial... Toxoplasma gondii parasites, anyone?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/01/220113-sneaky-cat-parasite-takes-over-human-brains-science/
And once infected, you are twice as likely to get in a car accident, among other negative effects.
1. Re:Not entirely mutually beneficial... by crimson+tsunami · 2013-12-16 20:34 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  summary says 5,000 years ago, so dinosaur accidents then :)
2. Re:Not entirely mutually beneficial... by mendax · 2013-12-16 21:31 · Score: 2
  
  It has nothing to do with parasites. My beautiful black cat is living proof that some cats are possessed by Satan.
  She's a feisty beast and very evil. The fact that she's black only makes it more evident.
  
  --
  It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
3. Re:Not entirely mutually beneficial... by gtall · 2013-12-16 23:35 · Score: 2
  
  Only in Kentucky according to the museum on early Earth history and other Biblical things.
4. Re:Not entirely mutually beneficial... by geminidomino · 2013-12-17 02:51 · Score: 2
  
  Give me evil over smart any day... My five year old giant mutant "Halloween" cat has figured out how doorknobs work. I am so screwed...
5. Re:Not entirely mutually beneficial... by Baby+Duck · 2013-12-17 05:21 · Score: 2
  
  There hasn't been a single case of toxoplasmosis in humans where they couldn't rule out the vector was tainted pork. Granted, cats do help spread it from pig to pig.
  
  --
  "Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Cats, domesticated ?? by baileydau · 2013-12-16 20:51 · Score: 5, Funny

BS.
I've got one on my desk right now proving it certainly isn't domesticated. She's trying to eat everything in sight. Our other one has previously chewed right through my phone charging cable.
The difference between cats and dogs:
A dog thinks: You feed me, you house me, you look after me. You must be a god.
A cat thinks: You feed me, you house me, you look after me. I must be a god.

--
Ever stop to think ... and forget to start again?
1. Re:Cats, domesticated ?? by Opportunist · 2013-12-16 21:48 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  In other words, the cat trained you through negative reinforcement.
  
  --
  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Re:Stop blaming autocorrect! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-16 21:37 · Score: 3, Funny

I have lots of strange abbreviations in my personal dictionary.
Re:Stop blaming autocorrect! by alexhs · 2013-12-16 22:19 · Score: 5, Funny

There is a reason you get are forced to preview your post before submitting.
And Muphry's law still applies :)

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Re:Stop blaming autocorrect! by Paradise+Pete · 2013-12-16 22:24 · Score: 5, Funny

And Muphry's law still applies
I see waht you did there.
Sensation! by nospam007 · 2013-12-16 22:48 · Score: 3, Funny

"Cat bones unearthed in a 5000-year-old Chinese farming village indicate that the animals consumed rodents "
Finally, that burning question "do cats eat mice?' can finally be laid to rest.
Cats do eat mice!
1. Re:Sensation! by gtall · 2013-12-17 04:43 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Ya, I'd recommend Siamese to anyone, but I'm unsure what happens if you do not get them as kittens. Kittens will bond to you at 6-7 weeks. My Siamese wanted to be near me whenever I was at home, climbing on me, curling up, anything to get close. I guess they are more talkative than the average moggie. Mine lived to 17 years, and I was heartbroken when they went to the Great Food Bowl in the Sky.
  The oddest thing happened during their last days. Tinkerbell was on her last life and would curl up near my face at night with her head on my arm. Ariel slept down at the foot where they both usually slept until Tinkerbell got sick. The last night Tinkerbell was with us (I had planned to take her in for the final vet visit the following day, she was really near the end), Ariel came up and was inconsolable, stayed near Tinkerbell that whole night side by side. The following night, when Tinkerbell was no more, Ariel came up and cuddled up just like Tinkerbell had done.
Re:Stop blaming autocorrect! by RabidReindeer · 2013-12-16 23:54 · Score: 2

There is a reason you get are forced to preview your post before submitting.
It's so you can see what you mis-typed. Right after you click the "Submit" button.
They weren't petting animals until recently? by dutchwhizzman · 2013-12-17 00:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

There is no proof we have actually been domesticating cats as petting animals for more than a few hundred years. Until the 19th century or so, these were just semi-wild animals that got access to our barns and homes to kill rodents, but they would claw you the moment you tried to touch them. It wasn't until we started breeding them for special looks that we got the "cute and friendly" animal we have now. Even that animal gets feral really quick, kittens born in the wild often act just like wild cats and aren't cute or attracted to humans at all. Domestication as in tolerating each other probably went on for a long time, but we haven't been petting them until we got the luxury of being able to breed them purely for their looks.

--
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1. Re:They weren't petting animals until recently? by VortexCortex · 2013-12-17 00:19 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  There is no proof we have actually been domesticating cats as petting animals for more than a few hundred years. Until the 19th century or so
  Quick now, Jeeves, fetch the net! I've spotted a rare young-earth Egyptianist.
We domesticated, not them by Anonymous Coward · 2013-12-17 01:56 · Score: 2, Funny

As many point out, the cats have it good in most homes. But I think dogs have it better. The stereotype is that dogs are dumb and cats are smart. Well, dogs are the ones who have an entourage (us) following them around and picking up their poop. Think about it. We pick up their POOP. We literally wait for them to finish pooping, then we (with a bag only a few hundredths of a millimeter thick) stoop to pick up their poop and we carry it until we get home to put in in our trash. Any other owner/pet relationship has the owner doing that?
Cats and editor religious wars by thogard · 2013-12-17 02:00 · Score: 5, Funny

While I agree that competent users of vi or emacs can all do the same things, I feel that the major difference between the two is related to what happens when a cat walks on the keyboard.
Re:Stop blaming autocorrect! by sudon't · 2013-12-17 04:25 · Score: 2

I can't understand how misspellings end up online at all. Mine are all underlined in red. Doesn't Windows do that?
But allow me this opportunity to air my pet slashdot peeve: Why do people consistently forget to put a space after an italics tag? That drivesme nuts.

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-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Re:yet another cat vs dog comment by Bing+Tsher+E · 2013-12-17 17:43 · Score: 2

I think the more correct line is:
A cat makes sure you are unhappy until you have fed him.