cats seem like they’ve all got an attitude problem. i don’t think they’re always smarter than dogs even though that seems to be what everyone thinks
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Who says they’re smarter? Just like dogs, some are smart and some aren’t. Perhaps dumb cats are just better at faking it, since even smart cats don’t give a crap what you want, they’re just better at getting what they want.
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Might cute little thing, I want to snuggle it. However, the voice over was annoying.
My 20lb housecat prefers to devour the winged critters in front of me. Will never forgrt the crunching sound.
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Cats make our collective souls shine.
There’s good evidence for option 2 here. The experiment of fox domestication is the strongest one - the researchers in this case were strict about selecting only for tameness (i.e. lack of aggression towards humans), but the tame foxes also developed neotenic morphological changes entirely as a side effect.
There are also good ideas regarding the biological mechanisms involved. The common physical changes observed in many domesticated species (e.g. “top heavy” head shape, short/rolled tail, spotted/piebald coloration) are associated with a particular lineage of cells during embryonic development - the neural crest. In the fox domestication experiment, it was noted that the main physiological basis for tame behavior appears to be an overall reduction of stress hormone levels, which made the foxes more trusting and less aggressive or fearful of changes. And what would you know - the stress hormone producing tissues in the adrenal gland also descend from the neural crest.
The idea here is that when there is a selective pressure for lower stress hormone levels, the developmental change that happens most readily is the suppression of neural crest cell development, which, in addition to endocrine changes, also leads to smaller jaws (= baby heads and short snouts), less developed limb and tail skeletal structure (= baby-sized appendages), less cartilage in the ear lobes (= floppy ears), not enough pigment cells to cover the entire skin (= white spots and piebald patterns), etc.
I’m not sure if there’s a decent empirical answer as to why it is easier to affect a broad cell lineage than something that would narrowly target the function of the adrenal glands. But it could be something as simple as there being more pre-existing variation of the former within natural populations, which is easy to amplify through selection, whereas the latter might involve waiting for a lucky mutation in a gene that is normally quite homogeneous across individuals. Or maybe tameness requires not only changes in hormone levels, but also something about neural glia (to which neural crest also contributes), and a global change to the neural crest is the easiest way to get the 2-in-1 effect.
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Not ours. Our cats are the cuddliest little furballs evars. If anything, one is a little emotionally needy, but I’d much rather that than standoffish.
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