- "Taken together, these studies significantly alter our understanding of one of humanity's most familiar companions. Rather than silently trailing behind early farmers, slinking ever closer to human activity and community, cats likely moved into Europe in multiple waves post-domestication from North Africa, propelled by human cultural practices, trade networks, and religious reverence."
Being treated like a god will get you everywhere.
- And of course being able to eliminate pest populations responsible for disease transmission, food spoilage, equipment/infrastructure damage, and other various harms has earned cats that seat in the pantheons of cultures around the globe.
- "Food spoilage" is putting it mildly. Mice have short generations. A single mouse can have up to ten litters in one year. If unchecked, a mouse population will quickly turn all your stored food into mice.
- Queensland is occasionally exceptionally good at this.
Here’s some video from four years ago https://youtu.be/rAdNJ1jczVI?si=HhB-P5lcAz3zhuMI
- In the meantime public sentiment toward cats in Australia is becoming really toxic (due to the consequences of a long-term ineffective feral control program). I swear one day when the chemical baits turn out to be worse than the cats themselves the pendulum will swing hard in favor of cats once again. They really are an indispensable tool and a big part of humanities agricultural success.
FWIW I'm in favor of dropping a few billion AUD into cat control programs and deploying technologies like felixer everywhere. Up until now it's just been an underfunded borderline volunteer affair.
- Maybe store some poisoned quadrotriticale?
- That’s the trouble with Tribbles.
- Are cats actually effective at pest control or is that cat propaganda? How would cats operate in these societies?
I know they can catch pests but are they effective at controlling them? Maybe they will limit the growth of pests, so better than nothing. Most cats catch for fun rather than food I think
Maybe we had much more cats around for this purpose, if so I'd imagine there is some archeological proof.
- > Most cats catch for fun rather than food I think
The hunting trigger is only loosely connected to hunger — they don't get hungry then go out to hunt, they'll often see a hunting opportunity and go for it, eating the result partially/totally/not as needed. In a situation with abundant prey this will look like they are mostly hunting for “sport”.
I assume this comes from hunt availability/success being intermittent: it is better to slightly over-hunt (and slightly overeat) to keep reserves up for a lax period that might be coming.
They say that a fed cat is a better mouser, and this might be why. A truly hungry cat will prowl less to conserve energy so have less opportunistic encounters with prey.
- >Are cats actually effective at pest control or is that cat propaganda?
Yes. Have you never heard of a barn cat? Until recently pretty much ever commercial or industrial facility large enough to have its own maintenance department typically had one or more.
>How would cats operate in these societies?
Just like a barn cat. Leave out starvation rations for it and it'll hunt for the rest.
- > Most cats catch for fun rather than food
Domestic cats do. Stray cat's hunt for a living.
- Catching for fun rather than food actually increases their mouse-hunting potential. With fun as a motivator, they can catch a lot more mice than they have the appetite to eat.
- I mean, you don't need archeological evidence given that there's a vast amount of historical evidence of cats being kept for pest control as well as companionship. Even the Western world was largely agrarian just a hundred years ago! And farm cats are still a common thing. Free-roaming cats are also a massive threat to bird populations in many places – cats are just very effective predators and birds reproduce much slower than mice and voles.
- I believe the royal society for the protection of birds studied whether cats are a threat to bird populations and concluded that they really aren't. Obviously cats do kill birds, but overwhelmingly the major threat to birds is habitat loss caused by humans. Also, cats kill rodents, which indirectly helps birds because rodents are a big threat to bird populations, because rats take eggs from their nests. In fact, cats preferentially kill rodents. Something like 90% of their diet will typically be rodents. Birds, for them, are only opportunity kills. In other words, cats are an easy scapegoat because they quite visibly do kill birds, but humans (as is usually the case) are the true underlying problem.
- It really depends on the region. Island populations are disproportionately at higher risk to eradication by cat due to the difficulty or impossibility in replenishing the population from outside/neighboring populations.
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- And if we're being honest, the whole soft tummies thing and purring probably helped too.
... this thread needs pictures.
- Wolverines have soft tummies too. That we see cats as cute is not so much that they have evolved to be cute. They look little different than wild cats. We see the palus cat as cute but pet its tummy and you will lose some organs. Those humans who protected and nutured cats were better survivors. Having cats around gave them an advantage over people who were indiferent to cats. We finding them cute is a trait that has evolved in us.
- Palus (or is it Palius?) cat has round pupils, like ours. Makes them easier to anthropomorphise.
- Pallas cat.
- Apparently is is [Pallas's cat] :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallas%27s_cat
with an apostrophe. shrug
- wolverines are also fuzzy and adorable. knowing full well how much it might fuck my shit up, i don't think i could stop myself reaching to pet it if i ever crossed paths with one.
- It’s toxoplasmosis parasites in the brain that causes the unfathomable love for cats. Those of us still uninfected[0] find it very odd.
[0] dog people
- Cat people never seem to have a need to boost their egos and take jabs at dog people in discussions about dogs. Only (a certain type of) dog people seem to do so. Insecurity? Superiority complex?
Maybe toxoplasmosis makes you a better person? It is my experience that cat owners are overwhelmingly nice, empathetic human beings. There does not seem to be such correlation among dog owners.
- > It is my experience that cat owners are overwhelmingly nice, empathetic human beings.
Unless you tease about toxoplasmosis.
- Unfortunately evolution does evolution:
- > Toxoplasmosis is a common infection that you can catch from the poo of infected cats, or infected meat. It's usually harmless but can cause serious problems in some people
The UK governments approach to using normal, simple language across all its web assets is fantastic.
- They've published an excellent blog about their language choices at https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and...
- “crystal mark english” is what to tell your LLM to write in.
- I'd never heard of it. The "crystal mark" itself is a money-making thing for what seems to be a for-profit company: https://www.plainenglish.co.uk/services/crystal-mark.html
- Would LLMs be guilty of trademark infringement?
Llama said its in CM. Gemini said "aiming for Crystal Mark". OpenAI called its output "plain, clear" without mentioning CM. Claude didnt comment its output. Deepseek returned "Here is your passage rewritten in clear, polished English with a refined and elegant tone—what you might call "Crystal Mark English"".
- Yeah
I feel that medical language in the UK is dumbed down for your average (and let me reiterate again, average) person
Which is good for the majority but slightly unnerving if you don't like being talked down or wants to know what is really happening and have anything above very basic medical knowledge
- How is the above quote dumbed down? To me it seems it is just ... communicated well.
- I was speaking more generically, I agree that those pages do a great job of communicating.
But in general healthcare communication in the UK (and Ireland) do feel like they're dumbing down stuff for you
- Could you provide an example?
- > eliminate ... equipment/infrastructure damage
And cause it.
- > equipment/infrastructure damage
The Cat has caused extensive damage in my house. I'm still working on repairing it.
- Have you considered introducing the Rat to distract the Cat from the infrastructure?
- The Cat only caught one Mouse in 10 years.
- Domestic cats are arguably the most successful mammalian carnivores anywhere.
- they hunted us for food once, figured out we’d feed them instead, and never looked back. probably the only species that domesticated us.
- Domestication is often thought of as a unilateral relationship. Like all relationships, it goes both ways.
We have domesticated cows and wheat. Now their population has reached tremendous size. So has our population. We both need the other species to survive. We need them, and they need us.
You could definitely take the perspective that we have been domesticated. For example, plants have domesticated us by feeding us.
- To be that guy, small felines never were big felines. Domestic kitties do not descend from people-eating ones.
- Mini-cats have much in common with main-cats, both in terms of software and hardware, but the power requirements are rather lower.
- Dogs have masters; cats have servants.
- I've joked that the nuclear wasteland will be populated by cockroaches, rats and ... cats. They are the ultimate survivor.
- I guess I'm trying to get the message of the article.
It's more of an origin story of the current lineage of domestic cats in Europe, no? It sounds like ancient Europeans would have had wildcats and older waves of domesticated felines that were mostly supplanted by the current lineage.
- I always found the conceptual intersection between cats and laptops to be full of coincidences.
Humans sometimes place cats on their laps. The same happens with laptops (hence the name).
Cats and laptops are often seen inside boxes.
Cats and laptops are known to reproduce sounds that are similar to humans but not quite the same.
Future historians will be so confused.
- Like laptops, you can sometimes interface directly with them via touch, but it's usually not worth the trouble.
- This is why cats are so fond of lying on top of laptops. They're kindred spirits, as it were.
- This does seem to be European cat oriented rather than "where did domesticated cats come from in the first place?"
- Just dropping by to say that I love my kitty friend.
- Although not mentioned in the article, I've heard that Egyptians developed a thing for orange cats (supposedly they look like the sun) and embarked on an intensive breeding program to make them for temple uses. Subsequently Vikings became intrigued by these orange cats on the basis they are easy to see on the deck of a ship (iron age hi-viz vests), and thereby spread them around everywhere (because Vikings).
- The orange cat coloration (technically "red" or "ginger") is actually due to a sex-linked gene on the X chromosome, not deliberate Egyptian breeding programs. Archaeological evidence doesn't support ancient Egyptian preference for orange cats - their art depicts cats of various colors. Viking-era cat remains show diverse coat colors emerged naturally through genetic drift rather than intentional selection. The spread of orange cats likely occurred through natural genetic distribution alongside human migration patterns.
- From my understanding, orange cats are almost exclusively male.
They also have one shared brain cell.
Source: My family is owned by a marmalade tom.
- The interwebs say cats have XY sex determination, and that the orange color gene is on the X chromosome and is recessive. So a male cat with an orange X will be orange, but a female cat needs both X's to be orange to be orange (a female cat with one orange X and one non-orange X will likely show as tortoise shell or calico). Assuming equal probability (P) of each X chromosome being orange so we have a chance at modelling, the males will have P chance of being orange, and females would have P * P chance. Assuming cats have evenly distributed sex,
If P is 90%, 90% of males are orange, and 81% of females are orange; and 47% of orange cats are female. If P is 10%, 10% of males are orange, 1% of females are orange, and ~ 91% of orange cats are male, ~ 9% are female.
- There was a discussion, here, some time ago, about how the orange gene was isolated.
- > orange cats are almost exclusively male
This is also equally true for black cats as the genetics works the same for them too.
However, it's more that "female cats can be tortoiseshell" and thus the ratios will get somewhere around a 2:1 ratio of male orange cats to female orange cats.
Assume that you've got 50% tortie females, 25% orange female, and 25% black female... and 50% orange male and 50% black male. You can run Montecarlo simulations on that but it will always be the case that orange (and black) cats are predominantly male because of the smaller number of options.
There's also the increased visibility of the "trouble puffs" on a male orange cat (compared to black male) and so conformation bias of "yep, that's an orange male cat."
- > They also have one shared brain cell.
You will appreciate:
- Only about 80% are male. This is as opposed to torties and calicos, which always by necessity have two X chromosomes (as the patchy pattern results from X-inactivation [1]). The very rare male torties are XXYs.
- I had an orange female cat. It was on Bali. I think they are quite common there.
- > They also have one shared brain cell.
Confirmed. Very early cooperative multitasking.
- I hear this anytime orange cats come up in conversation and I don't quite get it - I had an orange cat when I was in high school and he was a very clever cat. I now have an orange female cat and she's got a big personality - very take-charge in her demands.
- agreed it's a confirmation bias, I've had many cats orange and not and they're all different, there's nothing uniquely quirky about orange ones.
- I wouldn't call it "confirmation bias," more like loving humor.
Cats, in general, are less intelligent than dogs, but they are loaded with instincts, so they can act both smart and stupid, at the same time.
- I'd be interested to see how that is measured... dogs and cats are significantly different, but I'm not sure I'd call cats less intelligent. Case in point with mine - she figured out how to weaponize my electronic stand-up desk as a way to get me to stand up so that she could steal my chair. Another figured out how to open doors so he could go wherever he wanted in the house. No, they don't go around sniffing out mines or earthquake victims - they instead have convinced people to give them a total life of leisure.
There's another part to their intelligence I wish we could study... multiple times I've had cats show up on my front porch as though they somehow know my house is safe. Example: several years ago a cat knocked on my door and by the time we got things detangled we understood that it lived several blocks away and likely had been in a really abusive situation. Somehow that cat understood that if came to my house it would be safe, whereas my neighbors on either side would have at best ignored it. I've now had this happen multiple time such that there is some kind of pattern - pheromones?
- Did you ensure that this cat didn't try elsewhere, first?
Hypothesis: you have (or had) at least a cat at home, while your neighbors didn't, and a cat showing up on your front porch may think "better here because at least a cat can live here, even if it triggers a territorial conflict".
- I think it's a wash personally, cats are far better problem solvers and have better comprehension of temporal and spatial displacement, but dogs are far more socially intelligent, intuit disposition and intent of even other species very quickly.
That said they must be fairly well matched intellectually or we wouldn't even be able to have this discussion.
- I have an orange cat, and there are definitely days when it's not his turn.
- You've got probably thousands of years between these two events, which undoubtedly contains a lot of feline history.
- I always figured that the cat's ability to eliminate vermin, particularly on ships, propelled their domestication and spread. This was simply too useful to early humans.
I'm reminded of the Russian silver fox domestication experiment [1]. What's interesting about that is how quickly the species adapts characteristics making them more desirable for humans.
[1]: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/russian-foxes-tameness-d...
- Vermin on ships weren't all bad. They prevented scurvy if you didn't overcook them.
- Humans love feeding animals. Some animals love being fed.
Put them together and you have symbiosis.
- It’s kind of strange to think that early humans would throw some of their hard-earned food to animals that were lurking around. Did they do it out of kindness or did they perceive that they might be able to tame them and put them to work?
- Mammals have a strong nurturing instinct, which helps with raising progeny. (So do birds.) Strong enough that it can overflow to members of another species. No calculation or ethical predisposition required, though they would strengthen the resolve.
- It is known that soon after domestication, dogs evolved the ability to digest starch rich foods. In other words to subsist on human food waste. This is one of the things which sets them apart from their carnivorous wolf cousins.
- This is a really interesting aside, because it turns out that until the 60s nobody had actually bothered to take the time to actually measure how much time hunter gatherers spent hunting and gathering. The answer was "not much", usually around 15 hours a week! [1]
This led to the 'original affluent society' paper. [2] The objections to it are quite asinine - like that cooking, cleaning, and other such time was not calculated, but of course such things also aren't counted for modern workers in their hours worked per week. Another objection being high infant mortality which again also applied, until quite recently, to industrial societies as well. It's an apples to apples comparison.
The point of this is that people in the distant past had rather extensive amounts of free time. And so them taking in some pets for fun and entertainment seems highly likely.
[1] - https://www.rewild.com/in-depth/leisure.html (in spite of the site's name this is an overview of academic literature on the topic)
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
- Humans have always left edible garbage behind.
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- Uh, cats are entirely capable of feeding themselves, that's the point. More pertinently, cats feed themselves on things that like to feed themselves on human food.
