The Mysterious Origins of Cat Domestication in China

Is the internet’s favorite animal actually made in China?

Over the years, there have been a number of different thoughts as to how domestication of various animals came about. Some people proposed that early domestication involved a kind of master-subject relationship, where humans guided wild animals to domestication through selective breeding and other techniques. On the opposite end of the spectrum, one theory holds that some domesticates manipulated humans into relationships that benefited the animals, at, possibly, the expense of people.

“Now, we look at it as being much more of a mutualistic relationship between humans and animals,” said Fiona Marshall, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. That is, both human and animal reap some kind of benefit through their increasingly co-dependent interactions. But not all relationships begin the same way — there are three different “pathways” to domestication.

Animals such as sheep, goat and cattle became domesticated through the prey pathway. They began as prey for hunters, but when their numbers dwindled, people implemented smarter, more selective hunting practices and likely protected the animals from other predators. Over time, these game management strategies transformed into herding and eventually controlled breeding. By comparison, the directed pathway is seen as a kind of intentional domestication, where people selected animals to domesticate for things such as milk, wool and transportation.

Species most frequently became domesticated through the commensal pathway, Marshall told io9. Here, animals, including dogs, pigs and chicken, came to human settlements to eat refuse or prey on other animals. At some point, the animals developed closer bonds with humans, which eventually grew into a domestic relationship. Researchers have reasoned that Near Eastern Wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica; below) — which are thought to be the ancestors of all domestic cats — became domesticated through a commensal pathway, after they began visiting human settlements to eat rodents. Surprisingly, however, there has been little archaeological evidence to back up this idea.

iO9 | Read the Full Article

The Mysterious Origins of Cat Domestication in China

iO9 | Read the Full Article

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