Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "The Evolution of the Cat" video.

  1. Infact that led to some scientist to argue that cats had not really been domesticated. Simply the bravest samples "selected themself" deciding to live close to an animal far bigger than them. To domesticate a species, humans need to control it's reproduction and, with cats, especially in a rural environment, that's really hard to do since, if females are not completely segregated, they tend to breed with multiple males wherever they want, so hindering any effort to selective breeeding.
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  2. Yeah. The ancestor of modern lynxes, the Lynx Issiodorensis, evolved in Europe and Asia and only later migrated to America.
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  3. "several decades" is not even the blink of an eye in cosmologic terms.
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  4. Dogs manifest considerable variety of forms because in dogs the dimension of body parts is dictated by a very small set of genes. Only 16 (while in humans, for example, they are over 100). so it's easy to select a mutation. If left in the wild and not selected, dogs converge to one form (there's practically no morfological difference between a Dingo and a Wolf). Actually dogs are pretty specialised carnivores. The "basic carnivore shape" tend to have an enlongated and flexible body (useful to both climb trees and chase preys in their den, while still being bigger than them). Felines still mostly follow this plan, while dogs, having evolved to chase their prey to exhaustion, developed long limbs and stiff body joints. That's why they don't climb trees, are awful jumpers, and can't force themself into small holes. Regarding to predation they are "one trick ponies".
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  5. All the existing mammal terrestrial carnivores are classified in two suborders, caniformia (dogs, bears, mustelids, pinnipedia...) and feliformia (cats, hyenas, mongooses...).
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