Hey everyone. I have been looking for this answer online but can't find it. I thought I read somewhere once that cats were native to Northwestern Africa before being domesticated but I have no idea how true that is. Does anyone know for sure?
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Where are cats originally native to?
- Thread starter avemaria02
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Now that is an interesting question. I must say I don't know.
I've always thought Egypt? Though.. weren't domestic cats created through the large breeds?
Here you go. Just a theory though
http://theophanes.hubpages.com/hub/Theories-on-the-Domestication-of-Cats
http://theophanes.hubpages.com/hub/Theories-on-the-Domestication-of-Cats
There was a show on I believe National Geographic. They got saliva samples from cats all over the world to check DNA. What they came up with was probably Egypt. They found some semi ferals around a temple in an isolated part of the country that had the DNA that they thought proved their theory. They were in an isolated area so they weren't intermingled with cats from other areas. They were even a little larger than the average domestic cat. They said that domesticated animals tend to get smaller over time.
A couple of years ago a group of scientists got together an did DNA analysis on cats from around the world in an attempt to answer this very question. They results were that our domestic cats are descended from wildcats found in Turkey and Syria, more specifically from Felis sylvestris lybica. There is also evidence that cats domesticated themselves closer to 100,000 years ago.
The study was done on mitochondrial DNA (only passed through the mother) so they were able to pinpoint the region by comparing it samples of DNA from current populations of wildcats.
You can read the actual study report here if you like. http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/Repr/Add/DomesticCat_Driscoll2007.pdf
For those who aren't into reading studies like this, they did compare Sand Cats to domestic cats, but they are not the progenitors of our house cats as previously hypothesized.
The study was done on mitochondrial DNA (only passed through the mother) so they were able to pinpoint the region by comparing it samples of DNA from current populations of wildcats.
You can read the actual study report here if you like. http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/Repr/Add/DomesticCat_Driscoll2007.pdf
For those who aren't into reading studies like this, they did compare Sand Cats to domestic cats, but they are not the progenitors of our house cats as previously hypothesized.
I think the people that did the Nat Geo study were going on the theory that cats descended from the original domesticated cats would have the the widest diversity of genes. I don't think we ever will know. The first human history of domesticated cats were from the time of the pharoahs in Egypt but I am sure they were domesticated before that.
The study results published in the National Geographic article state that our domestic cats are genetically indistinguishable from the African Wildcat. A friend from South Africa works for the protection of these animals; as they are able to mate with domestic cats, their remaining population is threatened for a lot of reasons: hybridization being one of them. They look like tabby cats - only there are no white patches naturally occurring in the wildcat population. http://www.saveacat.org/acrmexico.html
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That is an interesting article. Thank you for posting it.
That is really interesting! Thanks!
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