A. A 2007 study of genes from 997 individual cats, both wild and domestic, points to common ancestors of domestic cats among the Near Eastern wildcat, Felis sylvestris lybica, one of the five subspecies of wildcat still found around the Old World. The other subspecies are Felis silvestris silvestris, the European wildcat; Felis silvestris ornata, the Central Asian wildcat; Felis silvestris cafra, the sub-Saharan African wildcat; and Felis silvestris bieti, the Chinese desert cat. Domestic cats and feral domestic cats can still interbreed with wild subspecies. The domestic cats’ genetic profiles most closely resembled those of the Near Eastern wildcat, the study found. The authors theorized that domestication occurred in the region where these cats are still found and coincided with the emergence of agriculture there and the need for rodent control for stored grain. The article, published in the journal Science, said that the domestic cats in the study shared at least five matriarchal lineages, as traced by mitochondrial DNA. The earliest evidence found of cats living with humans was a cat burial in Cyprus from about 9,500 years ago, reported in 2004. question@nytimes.com
No comments:
Post a Comment