Domestic Cats Essay

The Evolution of The Cat

Today’s domestic house cats sure have changed and traveled far from their old wildcat ancestors across the world. Cats have traveled halfway across the world and now live around the world in various breeds and sizes. Even though they live today in their domesticated form they still retain some of the traits that their ancestors bestowed upon them. The African wildcat is believed to be the ancestor of all domestic cats, and they’re even still alive to this day. Over thousands of years of speciation, domestic house cats came to be from these wildcat ancestors.

Cat’s have inherited much from their entire family over the period of thousands of years. They got most of their notable features from their cat ancestors. Domestic

cats still retain their hunting adaptations from their family, like good vision in the dark, retractable claws, and they also have a compact and flexible body so that they have an easier time moving around. They lost some traits over time though, they no longer have the ability to roar because the bones in their throat have gotten too rigid, this is one of the major differences from domestic cats and wildcats. Old habits still remain though, and domestic cats still maintain a sleeping schedule as if they were still wildcats. Cats are known to sleep a total ⅔ of their life! Cats sure have changed from their wildcat ancestors, but they still are useful cats.
Domestic cats belong to the youngest genus of the feline family known to this date.

The Felis genus of cats is the youngest known genus of the cat family and most domestic cats have derived from this genus. The most accepted ancestor of today’s modern domestic cats are the African Wildcat which is believed to have branched off and made the lineage of domestic cats about 70,000 to 100,000 years ago. The African wildcat was a hunting animal and gave all of its descendants their hunting traits. Today since domestic cats and small felines barely use these traits however, they have more or less become unfunctional or have been turned into weakened versions.

It all started when that land bridge between Canada and Western Europe still existed. African wildcats slowly migrated to the west along with other small wildcats like the Eastern European wildcat and many others. Over time they were domesticated by the natives and slowly lost their need for their hunting adaptations since they were constantly fed by their owners. Over the thousands of years wildcats slowly just became today's modern domestic cat, but they still retain some of their traits from over the years.

Domestic cats have traveled a long way from their original habitat and now live all around the world. The African wildcat gave America domestic cats and if it would’ve never come here we probably wouldn’t have known what a cat was for a couple more hundred years. Today domestic cats live all around the world, and they all still exhibit traits from their wildcat

ancestors.