Whenever I sit down on the couch, one of my two Abyssinian cats will quickly trot over to me, toy in mouth. She drops the faux-fur mouse at my feet and looks up expectantly—ready for me to throw the toy across the apartment so that she can run and fetch it. When she races back with the toy, ready for another go, it’s easy to mistake her for a puma hunting for her lunch. When she stares out the window, stalking the finches that congregate around our birdfeeder, she chatters with anticipation and frustration. Suddenly, she’s not just a pampered ten-pound housecat; she’s a ferocious predator ready to pounce.
We feel a strong kinship with our pets, especially the dogs and cats that live in about 63 percent of American homes. We don’t, however, have the same loving thoughts about badgers, komodo dragons, or seagulls. So what makes our pets so special? And of all the millions of species of animals on the planet, what made early humans choose which animals to domesticate?
Man’s Oldest Friends
Humans developed agriculture about 8500 years ago, but long before we grew crops or tended fields, we were cuddling with puppies. UCLA researchers hypothesize that dogs were domesticated about 100,000 years ago, if not before, when canines were more like wolves. The dominant theory is that human tribes took in the cuddly, cute pups and they became comfortable living among people. Although they were ferocious predators, the friendlier, tamer animals were very successful as pets, and passed down those genetic traits, resulting in today’s dogs, who are gregarious and friendly by nature. Dogs are naturally social animals, which probably made domestication easy, since humans only had to fulfill the role of “top dog” to instill obedience from the rest of the pack. Besides friendship, dogs offered their services in hunting, retrieving, and herding.
Cats, on the other hand, have a more mysterious history, and it’s hard to tell exactly when they first became domesticated. Although the prevailing story is that the Egyptians started keeping cats to kill rodents around their grain storage, scientists have found feline remains as old as 9500 years, predating the Egyptians by about 4000 years. Ancient cats were revered and honored, and in return, they helped keep the rodent population in check. Remains found in human gravesites indicate that they held a very special place in society, not just as working animals, but as pets and companions. Cats are solitary and not easily trained, but their affinity for food and shelter probably helped them overcome their objections to domestication.
