Cats and humans have shared the same households for at least 9,000 years, but we still know very little about how our feline friends became domesticated. An analysis of the cat genome by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis reveals some surprising clues.
The research appears Nov. 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.
Cats have a relatively recent history of domestication compared with dogs; canines arose from wolves over 30,000 years ago.
"Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semidomesticated," said senior author Wes Warren, PhD, associate professor of genetics at The Genome Institute at Washington University. "They only recently split off from wild cats, and some even still breed with their wild relatives. So we were surprised to find DNA evidence of their domestication."
One way scientists can understand the genetics of domestication is to look at what parts of the genome are altered in response to living together with humans, Warren added.
The researchers compared the genomes of domestic cats and wild cats, finding specific regions of the domestic cat genome that differed significantly.
The scientists found changes in the domestic cat's genes that other studies have shown are involved in behaviors such as memory, fear and reward-seeking. These types of behaviors -- particularly those when an animal seeks a reward -- generally are thought to be important in the domestication process.
"Humans most likely welcomed cats because they controlled rodents that consumed their grain harvests," said Warren. "We hypothesized that humans would offer cats food as a reward to stick around."
This meant that certain cats that would normally prefer to lead solitary lives in the wild had an additional incentive to stay with humans. Over time, humans preferred to keep cats that were more docile.
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