Research paper: Domestication of dogs and cats
Rough draft
Ever wonder how cats and dogs have become our loyal companions? Today households in the U.S. carry 30% of cats and 40% of dogs on average. Despite cats and dogs loyalty to humans, their history is not so nice, cats and dogs have become domesticated but not by themselves. Here is some underlying historical information behind how first cats and dogs have become domesticated.
Cats have been in the homes of humans for thousands of years. "All 600 million housecats in the world can be traced back to five females of this species". (pets. the nest) Ancient Egyptians worshiped a cat goddess and they often had their beloved pets mummified and buried with them. All cats are a unique
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Dogs are believed to originate from wolves, but theories investigate and lead to the cross breed of a wolf and a coyote. "Scientists have used DNA evidence to show that, more than likely, the dog did indeed descend from the gray wolf". (HowStuffWorks) Other research such as the mitochondrial DNA of a dog suggests that dogs and wolves were a completely different species about 100,000 years ago. In DNA scientists have found more dogs have a higher percentage of wolf genes from wolves native to the middle east. With these studies scientists believe that the middle east was the original location where domestication occurred. Historians believe that dogs were first domesticated by humans before any other animal. Much scientific evidence was based on the behavior and appearance of dogs. Canines were specifically said to be just tamed wolves but in other cases researchers believe wolves were attracted by humans waist. (Beam) This means these wolves were attracted to human settlements. These canines first were socialized because they were brave enough to approach humans, yet not so aggressively because they were getting fed. After a period of time passed dogs features adapted to being fed and not having to hunt anymore so their features changed overtime. As more time passed and these dogs became more appreciate to humans, humans started to breed the dogs to help with hunting, herding, taking guard, and carrying heavy stuff. The earliest finding of dog bones that were discovered were in Belgium in 2008 and they are believed to be from 31,700 years
When the question of how some animals ended up to be domesticated is raised, dog, which was the first domesticated animal, fascinate scientists. Debates revolve around the issues of “intentionality" — human choice animal to domesticate— and "self-domestication," — animals choice to be domesticated. How you address these issues depends on your knowledge on how domesticated animals changed morphologically and physiologically. Domestication, which was long and complex process, natural selection and artificial selection, may both have functioned at same and different or times. Again, intentionality overlooks significant questions such as what do morphology,
Dogs have been domesticated for as long as 135,000 years which makes cats seem fairly new to the household. Both dogs and cats were originally used for reasons that benefited human work. Now- a-days, dogs are far more useful with job skills. When I was little, I used to live outside. Not literally, but just in the sense that I was an outdoors kind of child. I enjoyed helping my dad with household projects and was ecstatic when I found out he would build a tree house for me. While he built the major part of it with dangerous equipment, I put myself in charge of collecting sticks to try and “help” my father put it together. Sooner or later, Nemo, my dog, was running back and forth with sticks in his mouth helping me collect what I needed.
As stated in the article “How Cats Became Domesticated”,” they hypothesized that cats were accepted by humans because of wild cats hunting rodents in agrarian civilizations as long as 9,000 years ago. This hypothesis carries weight as cats are excellent hunters and are still praised for killing unwanted rodents even today. I personally know family members that only own cats for dealing with rodents in their property. These family members are still maintaining the traditional cat human relationship from our ancestors. What was interesting in that same article was when they stated, “Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semi-domesticated… we were surprised to find DNA evidence of their domestication”. This explains the independent nature of cats that allows them to hunt rodents without the guidance of humans. Cats carry in a wild nature that keeps them self-sustained and unlike other domesticated animals are not completely dominated by their owner. Being semi-domesticated does not mean that cats are completely indifferent to humans; cats still have a unique connection to their
Some people may think that both cats and dogs serve the same purpose in life, and that’s being companion animals. However, cats and dogs are two totally different species. Although dogs and cats have some similarities, they definitely have their own differences.
Most people would think that dogs and cats are polar opposites and don’t have much in common but that’s not exactly true. Compared to some other pets, cats and dogs have a lot of similiarities. To start off, they are both domesticated animals. Some people like to buy exotic or wild animals as pets, such as tigers or raccoons, and
We are inseparable; they are more than tame animals. They have become a part of humanity that have and will shape our species. Dogs have been an essential part of the book of humanity well before the first settlements and human survival might not have been possible without dogs. How did dogs go from a wiled animal, to the loving spices that we share almost every moment of our lives with? We share every thing with them; our lives, our homes, our money (for their food , medical care and up keep) beds, food, compassion, and love. They are treated just as well as our own children. Many people including myself share almost everything with our dogs. But how does this story begin, where has it taken us throughout history, and today, what were we able to accomplish?
Cats are better pets than other domestic animals because they can take care of themselves. To begin, some people believe that cats are needy, but Johnson’s research states that cats are solitary creatures who do not need their humans in order to survive (Johnson 45). A cat can exist without a human to take care of it. Stray cats do it every
The earlier studies that looked at the genetic signatures of domestication in dogs, and came to differing conclusions about canine origins. One group suggested that dogs were domesticated around 10,000 years ago during the Agricultural Revolution, when wolves started scavenging human scrap heaps. Another concluded that wolves and dogs split 32,000 years ago, somewhere in East Asia. The origin of man's best friend has been a source of wonder and heated debate for centuries. Even Charles Darwin was unsure whether the dog's true ancestry could be determined, because dog breeds vary
Cats are different from dogs when it comes to domestication. There have been many relationships that have occurred over time and there is much debate about when cats were domesticated or if domestication happened at all. There is some evidence to support different domestication of cats’ timeline. Exploring the diverse ways and theories of the domestication of cats.
The domestication of dogs started very early. Dogs were domesticated from wild wolves by humans in hunter and gatherer communities. Humans tamed wolves by feeding them and allowing wolves into camps. It is believed that they also selectively bred the wolves. Dmitry Belyaev, a Russian geneticist, proved that canines could be bred for tameness. “The foxes that
become domesticated? They are believed to have been domesticated very long ago. The fossils of wild cats and domesticated cats show barely any difference at all. In fact, a 10,000 year old grave site in Cyprus included the dead remains of humans and cats together, before the love affair of cats began in Egypt. More evidence states that 4,000-9,000 years ago the art forms from Egypt contain humans and cats, and even cats together. There were even cat statues placed and found around Egypt long, long ago. There have even been some statues placed around people’s tombs, mainly the important ones. Therefore, there is a high chance that some Egyptians had cats as household pets. But, some research shows that cats were first domesticated in China over
In an average household, consisting of the parents and their children, it is quite common to see an extra member of the family – the domestic pet. Truly, there are many kinds of domestic animals that have been adopted into the homes of individual families across the globe: fish, dogs, cats, horses, hamsters, etc. Out of the countless number of kinds of pets, dogs and cats earn a special place in people’s hearts; they are the most popular. Though they both are highly valued among their owners, cats and dogs remain in an ongoing popularity contest. Some people believe cats are superior to dogs, while others hold the opposing view that dogs hold higher rank than cats. Cats, however, are indeed the more superior species of domesticated pets rather than their canine counterparts for two important reasons.
Though it is widely believed that early humans domesticated dogs, what if it was dogs that domesticated them? The domestication of wolves occurred when humans realized that these canines are great hunters. Nevertheless, this was “a time when modern humans were not very tolerant of carnivorous competitors. In fact, after modern humans arrived in Europe around 43,000 years ago, they pretty much wiped out every large carnivore that existed, including saber-toothed cats and giant hyenas” (Hare and Woods). Similarly, the fact that the wolves need to eat, shows that if humans wanted to domesticate them, they would have been forced to sacrifice some of their meat to be able to feed them. Dr. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods, the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center and a research scientist at Duke University, respectively, contemplate how perhaps humans domesticated wolves from the
Second, like all domestic animals, cats have been bred to live in close association with people. This is true not only of owned animals, but also abandoned and stray cats that have become feral but still lurk at the edges of human habitations. As the human footprint continually expands, so too does
According to Pets4Homes, they say “we often think that humans tamed cats and dogs and turned them into the pets that we own today, in reality, it was the cats and dogs themselves that initiated their first interactions with humans, moving closer and closer to human settlements several millennia ago. Cats and dogs would benefit from close proximity to human habitation in order to scavenge and find food and stay warm, while humans got the advantage of having dogs to scare off potential threats and help them to