Sunday, April 29, 2012

Evolution of Domestic Cats

         About 500 million years ago the cat evolved from reptiles. Over the may years it took for evolution to occur the reptile started to change into big cats like tigers and saber tooth. Even when evolution is taking place there are still similarities between all of them. Today's domestic cats have similar eyes, bone structure in the legs, claws/nails, and how the shoulder blades are positioned. 

The front teeth are still the largest but not as big as saber tooth tigers
        

       Before any person could even think about taking in a cat they were still too dangerous as wild tigers. The saber tooth tiger was the most common ancestor of the domestic cat. The large toothed tiger is the oldest ancestor and was the most dangerous. Then once the tigers no longer needed their large teeth evolution changed the size of the teeth and of the cat along with them. The first domestic cat was in 4,000 B.C when the Egyptians started to praise them as gods and goddesses. 


       
        With the Egyptians praising the cats as gods and goddesses everyone in Egypt wanted on so they could show how much they loved them. Then explores started to travel and around 2,900 B.C ships started to take domestic cats to many places all over the world. Genetics then started to change the color of the coats and then everyone could tell the different species apart. When the changes occurred it showed how there were going to be many different species of cats just like the different ones all around the world now. 
 

There are over 80 different types of cats all around the world, some pure breed and some cross breed. This just shows that there could be more breeds to come over time.



Different types of cats

























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