The Nature of Things (1960–…): Season 54, Episode 19 - The Lion in Your Living Room - full transcript
Beautiful, elegant, mysterious.
They're the most popular
pet in the world.
Cute, cuddly, and fun, but in
every way built for the hunt.
One of the big appeals to me about
cats, is that they are these little,
little wild creatures that
we share our space with.
Is that touch of the wild
what we most admire?
Or something we want to change?
Can these superlative hunters
ever truly be domesticated?
I think the cat, if it's going to
persist as a popular companion animal
is going to have to change in
some way.
What do you really know about
the lion in your living room?
A solitary hunter.
One of nature's most capable predators.
A symbol of grace, balance,
and elegance.
It's hard to believe that
these clumsy kittens
have inherited the hunting prowess
of their wild ancestors.
Kittens play a great deal
and it's one of the things
that people find very appealing
about them, enchanting even.
Kitten play is really just
a whole load of hunting type
ideas where they're
pouncing on things.
In the wild, play hunting would
soon give way to the real thing.
Powerful muscles, flexible bodies,
sharp claws, the sensitive paws,
even the delicate whiskers
all play a role
in the graceful movements
of a true hunter.
Surprisingly, the cat's elegant walk is
not very efficient, compared to a dog's.
Their gait evolved,
not to save energy
but provide the stealth
to hide and strike.
The same evolutionary demands have
shaped some of the cats' cutest behaviors
like the instinct to find a
safe place to hide from enemies
and to leap out at prey.
Climbing a tree in pursuit of
dinner can prove dangerous.
One slip could end in disaster.
Even if they fall upside down
they can turn and land on their feet
in as little as 40 centimeters.
That's not as simple as it sounds.
In fact at first it seems to
defy the laws of physics.
As the cat begins falling,
her legs rotate
allowing her to perform a seemingly
impossible mid-air adjustment,
all in a fraction of a second.
Before hitting the ground all four legs
reach out to act as shock absorbers.
An ability useful for survival,
in forest or high-rise jungle
where their curiosity can
trip them up.
I'm Dr. Koharik Arman,
one of the veterinarians here
at Cats Only Veterinarian Clinic
located in Vancouver, BC.
This is the time of the year
now that we start to see
what's called high-rise syndrome.
And what that refers to is cats
falling or jumping off of balconies
and then ending up with injuries.
Sometimes they come out unscathed
and people always joke about
those nine lives that cats have,
and sometimes that seems that
there's a bit of truth to that.
Cats can fall from really quite high
buildings and they've got a very effective
and, presumably, completely
instinctive, spontaneous
and very rapid strategy
for dealing with that.
If they are.. Do feel themselves
falling a long distance
they actually are able to parachute,
they stick their legs out,
literally sideways, which then
stretches the skin of the belly,
which does slow their
progress downwards.
Like their large carnivore cousins,
domestic cats spend most of
their time between hunts resting.
They spend at least
half their time asleep.
But when they move,
they can move quickly.
A house cat can run almost 50 kilometers
an hour, at least for a short burst.
And they have some
unique physical features
that can get them out
of tight spaces.
They have what are called
floating clavicles,
so their collar bones are not
fixed in place to their skeleton,
they're floating in their muscles and
that's how they can squeeze themselves
into and out of very narrow spaces.
And also they have a compressible rib
cage, which helps in that department too.
A cat's evolutionary history
as a predator
that stalks and pounces for
the kill
is evident in how they play, how they
move, and even in how their senses work.
I'm Dr. Kelly St. Denis.
I own the Charing Cross Cat Clinic.
It's an all cat clinic which makes
a really nice environment for us
and especially for the cats. So these
kittens were born seven days ago.
When kittens are they
are able to smell fairly well
so that allows them to find the nipple
so that they can nurse and get milk.
They don't really hear very well, and
they certainly can't see at newborn age,
their ears are flapped down
and their eyes are closed.
At about five days of age they are able
to hear and very gradually we can see
that their earflaps are
starting to come up
so that they will be able to hear
much better by three weeks of age.
Despite being born deaf,
it's their sense of hearing that
best reveals their wild ancestry.
A cat's ears can swivel to help
them locate the source of a sound,
pointing backwards,
forwards or sideways.
Once mature, they can hear
two octaves higher than a human
and a full octave higher
even than a dog.
Cats can hear the squeaks of mice.
And it's probably very useful to
them in hunting where they can hear,
what we call ultrasound, which
is being generated by their prey
and enables them to.. To track down
their prey and locate it better.
Their ability to hear ultrasonic squeaks
too high pitched for human ears,
isn't the biggest surprise.
Based on their physiology, they shouldn't
be able to hear the low frequencies.
To a biologist the really remarkable
thing about a cat's hearing
is not that it can
hear the squeaks of mice,
but that it can hear human voices, in
particular low-pitched male human voices.
Come. Good boy.
Which the size of its head
and the size of its ears,
therefore dictates that it
shouldn't be able to hear.
It's not only the range of their hearing
that makes cats successful hunters.
Something which I think many people
don't appreciate about the cat
which is that it has a
very good sense of smell.
Everybody thinks that dogs are the
species with the amazing sense of smell
and of course that is true.
But cats are still about a thousand
times more sensitive than we are.
The area inside the nose
dedicated to trapping smells
is five times larger in
domestic cats than in humans.
While we have perhaps
five million scent receptors,
the cat has 60 million or more.
What many cat owners don't appreciate
is that that cats actually
have two olfactory systems.
So you have the regular one, which
is the same one that we have,
where air is drawn in through the
nose and over the olfactory membranes.
But, also, in common with
many other mammals,
cats have a thing called
a vomeronasal organ,
which is another olfactory organ.
the organ itself lies between the
roof of the mouth and the nostrils.
And they're used, this olfactory
apparatus, the vomeronasal organ
is used when sniffing other cats.
Smell and hearing are important
to locate prey,
but vision provides more
detailed information.
In about seven to fourteen
days their eyes will open
and they'll start to be able
to see.
They won't be able to see very well
until they're about four months of age,
at which point their vision will be
approximately as they would for an adult.
They can hunt in the day or night,
but their eyes reveal that
they prefer low light.
Cat's pupils have evolved to
protect their sensitive retinas.
They also have these vertically
constricting pupils,
as opposed to our round ones.
This allows their pupillary
size to change very quickly
from contracted to dilated
depending on what they're doing,
These well-protected eyes
look out on a world
that's very different
than the one we see.
Cat's vision is pretty different
from our own.
They don't see as much in
the way of color as we do.
They see mostly blues and greys.
They don't differentiate well between
orange and brown and red and green,
but they have a few advantages
that we don't.
They can see colors that
we can't, like ultraviolet.
Perfect for tracking
their prey's urine trails.
And these aren't the only ways
in which the cats' eyes
are adapted to hunting in the dark.
Everybody has generally seen
those reflective eyes at night
or in photos and that is because
of a special area on their retina,
the back of the eye, called the tapetum
lucidum and it acts almost like a mirror.
It's iridescent and basically
bounces light off of it
so that then it has a second
chance to go through the lens,
basically enabling kitties to bring
more light into their vision
than is actually in the room
and see in the dark.
The cat's night vision allows
it to hunt in the dark.
But their eyes don't work
well at close range.
What that means is things, as they
approach the cat, will go out of focus.
Probably around six to eight
inches away from the cat's nose,
it starts to go out of focus.
And also they lose binocular
vision at that point.
They start seeing double, the
things that are close to them.
When the prey is close enough, their
whiskers can feel it's exact location.
Whiskers are thicker than
other hairs
and are full of blood vessels
and sensitive nerve endings.
Each of these specialized
hairs transmits information
about how fast and how far
it's being bent.
Allowing them to chase prey through
the twists and turns of narrow tunnels,
even in total darkness.
This is Oswald. He is a
neutered male purebred Ragdoll
and he's been coming to
us since he was a kitten.
The whiskers that most people
are familiar with in cats
are the ones that are at the
side of their cheeks.
They also have whiskers or vibrissae
is the other name for these,
above their eyes.
Cats also have whiskers
on the inside of their paws.
These whiskers also help
with the spatial orientation.
It helps them to know where they
can move to and what types of spaces.
Even the cats' tongue has its secrets.
Elegant creatures, they don't
lap up their drink like a dog.
Looking closely, her tongue appears to
corkscrew as the liquid is drawn up.
If you've ever been licked by
a cat,
you've felt an irritating
sandpaper like rasp.
It's not the taste buds you feel,
but tiny barbs down the center
of the tongue.
Cats spend about 25% of their
waking hours grooming themselves.
He's actually washing himself or
trying to wash himself on his paws.
Cats have papillae on their
tongue that are quite rough
which will help them with their grooming
to keep their coats healthy and mat free.
These act like combs
when the cat is grooming,
or like knives when stripping the
last scraps of meat from a bone.
The cat's sense of taste is kind
of similar to ours in some ways
because it is basically the
same mammalian pattern of taste.
They taste with taste receptors
on their tongues.
But in many ways it ends there.
The kinds of things that the
cat's tongue is sensitive to
are really quite different to ours.
And those differences
are because this little lion
is a hunter who has evolved
to need only meat in her diet.
They absolutely don't have
the capacity to taste sweets
because they're obligate carnivores,
they really aren't meant to ingest
anything that has a sweet taste to it,
so it just doesn't serve
a purpose for them.
It turns out that even the cats'
reputation for being a finicky eater
is about being a hunter.
At first it may seem like a bad idea for
a wild creature to be picky about food,
especially an animal
whose diet is so restricted.
We now know that our domestic pet
cats do have nutritional wisdom.
They are capable of picking out
which of a number of diets
has the best protein content,
because cats need a great
deal of protein in their diets.
Far more than almost any
other animal.
And they also have a strategy
for addressing potential,
future nutritional imbalances,
which is to go out and look
for something to eat
that is not the same as
the last meal you had.
That's partly behind the cat's
kind of notorious fussiness.
Rescued from a life of hunting
and scavenging,
this cat remains very picky
about the treats that she selects.
It's much more exaggerated,
much more easy to detect
in cats which have had to live
on the streets, if you like.
That have had to select a balanced
diet in order to survive and breed
rather than simply being offered
nutritionally complete food
by their owners.
They are much fussier about what
they eat than pet cats would,
if you can believe that.
Born deaf, blind and helpless,
in the wild all that keeps them from
becoming prey to larger predators
is their mother's care.
Getting that can
sometimes prove difficult.
Accidently pushed out of the nest, this
kitten instinctively cries for help.
Fortunately, her mother notices.
Whether lions or leopards,
it's only the very young
in most cat species who meow,
and then only to their mothers.
But domestic cats use
this sound in other situations
when they want attention
mostly when communicating
with humans.
Come on Jesse!
Jesse, I have a treat for you.
Do you want that?
All meows are not equal.
Every cat has their own.
Come here. You want some din-dins?
These are sounds that
can have many meanings.
Each cat and their humans
must somehow agree on definitions.
Some develop a large vocabulary.
So they'll have one meow
for I'm hungry, feed me.
And another one for please let
me out the door and so on.
And these seem to be private
languages that develop
between the cat and the owner.
We know this because if you
record these different meows
and then play them back
to different owners,
the owner of the cat, of that particular
cat will instantly recognize them.
"That's the meow he makes when
he wants to be let out.
That's the one he makes
when he's hungry."
But played to other cat's owners,
even the owners of cats which
have a repertoire of meows
and they can't identify which
is which.
Beyond meowing, cats have a
number of vocal signals,
not that we always understand them.
This cat has no need to hunt
for a meal.
Still the old urges are there and they
occasionally surface in surprising ways.
Some cats make a special
chattering sound
when they are hunting or thinking
how much they'd like to be.
It's not known exactly
why some cats chatter.
Whether it's frustration,
anticipation of the kill,
or an attempt to lure prey
by imitation.
Other sounds they
make are less mysterious.
When they're quite unhappy
we can see growling and hissing,
also certain vocalizing that.. That
sounds almost basically like a caterwaul,
a yowl, essentially, that's a very
unhappy and very stimulated cat.
But, fortunately for us Sybil right now
is very content and purring away happily.
Purring is another sound
we associate with cats.
Strangely we know little
about it.
Most people think that purring
is an expression of emotion
as far as the cat's concerned,
that the cat is happy.
And 9 times out of 10 that's true but
it's not the reason for the purring.
It's doing it to try to get you or another
cat indeed to do something for it.
So kittens purr in order to get their
mother to settle down and nurse them.
And so that piece of communication
goes on and is carried on into adulthood.
Large members of the cat family,
like lions and tigers, can't purr.
The roaring cats don't purr,
but some of the smaller cats purr.
I mean, in fact, the ability to roar,
sort of produces a change in the,
in the vocal apparatus,
which means that you can't purr.
Karen McComb studies
animal communication,
in large animals,
like elephants, and lions.
Then her own cat piqued her interest
in this apparently simple sound.
This came about simply because
my own cat
was very adept at soliciting
food from me.
And, in particular he had this
sort of wake up purring routine
where he would start giving this
very insistent purring in the morning.
I thought why is it that
this particular purring is so,
sort of, unpleasant to the ear?
Why is it that it's, it does sound urgent
and it's--it's so difficult to ignore?
Professor McComb compared the purrs
of a number of cats including her own.
So, this is the non-solicitation purr from
my cat and you'll see that it's actually,
it's a very regular purring,
classical purring type sound.
In fact, this purr was rated as one
of the most pleasant of all the cats.
So, what I'm going to do is play you
the solicitation purr from my own cat.
And you should be able to hear
that within the purr
there's a sort of
a slightly whiny element.
Incredibly, Professor McComb
discovered that this solicitation purr
was at a similar frequency
to the cry of a human baby.
So it's got this sort of
slightly manic element to it.
And if you look at the
screen here
you'll see there's a dark
band at,
in his case it's a bit over
400 hertz,
but that is the sort of
cry like frequency.
And it's there very strongly
in each of the main beats of
the purr.
So that there is a frequency
that sort of,
jumping out of the rest of the sound
spectrum, at the point of this cry.
And the cats have somehow tapped in
to this sensory bias that we've got
and are using it to improve
the level of care they get.
Solitary hunters who can get another
species to do their bidding.
Their dual nature fascinates us.
We watch them contentedly
rolling at our feet one moment,
slinking off who knows
where the next.
Unlike dogs, cats have another
life usually hidden from us.
Now, thanks to modern technology
we are getting a glimpse
into the secret lives of cats.
Studies reveal that most
have a pretty defined turf,
an area they patrol on a
daily basis.
Often not much more than a
few blocks.
Of course there are exceptions, brave
explorers who travel great distances.
This is our kitty, Kinter.
He lives with a dog, Ruby.
We've been tracking Kinter's adventures.
Sometimes they need to go no further
than a neighbor to get an extra treat.
You know what, he comes here and
he visits us almost every day.
Does he really?
Yes, we love him.
He sits with my mom and dad.
Does he really?
Yeah, he sits with us
and takes his little nap,
and we feed him cheese or little bits
of bacon and ham almost every day.
A cat's daily patrols are
anything but random.
It's a way for them to mark
and guard their turf.
Even if you've never seen what happens
when there's a conflict over territory,
you've almost certainly
heard the results.
Studies find that cats often share
the same, or overlapping territories.
They simply avoid patrolling at the
same time, like feline timesharing.
Running into rivals isn't the only danger
facing cats living on the streets.
The survival of great numbers
of stray cats, and feral cats,
that have never known
human companionship,
proves their wild nature
has been preserved.
These undomesticated domestic cats
give us the best vantage point
for understanding how
these once wild animals
adapted to life with humans.
Cats certainly are not
domesticated completely.
They are.. They are like
little wild creatures
and they still have the
capacity to exist without us.
You would be hard-pressed
to find a Maltese
or a teacup Chihuahua who could
make it on his own,
on the street and forage and
for food and seek shelter
and reproduce and all the rest.
But cats are a whole other story.
Many cities are struggling with large
populations of cats that live all,
or some of the time on the street.
Dealing with the feral cat explosion is
often left up to concerned neighbors.
The thing that means the most is feeling
that when you bring a cat off the street
that you see has either
been lost, abandoned,
shoved aside, pregnant
because they didn't want her.
Bringing that cat in,
seeing it in a home, flourish,
respond to love and affection,
that's the best thing in the world.
We do a lot of work with the City
of Toronto and other organizations,
Toronto Humane Society,
and we have to figure out how to deal with
the feral cat overpopulation in the city.
Hi mew mews.
They visit the feral cat colony, get
to know who's who and how they relate.
Come on guys, breakfast.
We were called to this colony by
a gentleman who was feeding cats
in a field and we were called
out to help.
So when we came here,
when we came to the site,
we found way more cats
than we ever imagined.
Now there's probably 15 cats
left give or take.
When we got here there was probably
closer to 40, 45 with kittens,
and we started trap, neuter, return.
They feed them regularly, trap
them, have their injuries treated,
and most importantly have
them neutered.
They may be the same species as
the animals who live in our homes
but if they aren't exposed
to a human touch early enough
they will remain untamable.
Cats who have not had socialization
with humans prior to 14 weeks of age,
they are much more prone
to be very fearful.
Not want to approach humans.
Take a very long
time to establish trust.
And are also more prone
to being fearfully aggressive.
It's not that they can't learn to trust
humans, that capacity is still there
and they still do retain
some behavioral plasticity.
But it can be a very long road.
We do have patients who were feral cats,
then when they were rescued and taken in
by their people took a matter
of months to years actually
before they established
trust with their owners.
Those who can learn to tolerate
humans can be put up for adoption.
Like these looking as
domestic as can be,
successfully adopted
from a feral colony.
Cats that live without
humans for too long
don't easily adapt to life
with us.
One solution is to give them shelters
where they can receive
medical attention
and live in relative comfort.
My name's Janet Reed, and I'm the manager
here at the number six road shelter
for the Richmond Animal
Protection Society.
And what we have here is
about 500 cats
that we take care of
because they're homeless.
They were cats that were born in
the wild, have never had a home,
or maybe were dumped
and were living in the wild.
We trap them, we spay and neuter them
and we make sure they have their shots
and vet care and then we bring them
in here so they have a place to be.
We put them in colonies.
If they come 10, 15 at a time,
which has happened to us.
It's a lot of cats to deal with
but we keep them together.
They know each other.
We don't have to try and adapt them
to the rest of the cats at the shelter.
And despite what everybody seems
to think this is not a cat Club Med.
Cats don't necessarily always
get along with each other.
When the environment enables
them to,
they will live together
and establish a hierarchy.
And generally that does mean that
there's some hissing and posturing
and fighting for a while until
that has been established.
Then if new cats try to enter,
it's possible for them to integrate
themselves,
but there will be a few tests
along the way.
But then other times a new cat
is completely shunned
and doesn't manage to work
their way into a colony.
Observing feral colonies tells
us about the nature of these
very territorial animals,
and their social lives.
Maintaining limits and alliances
requires constant communication.
Messages of all kinds
being sent and received,
displays of warning
and acknowledgment.
One key social signal
is the straight-up tail.
We think that the tail-up
signal evolved
from a signal that kittens use
to signal to their mothers.
They use this around
the--the time of weaning
and it's seen in a number
of wildcat species.
Not just the wildcat that's
the ancestor of the domestic cat.
And they're probably using this
as a way of greeting their mother
when she returns to the nest
with food for them.
And it may be one of the ways they
have of persuading her to feed them.
But in all those other species, they then
stop doing it once they reach adulthood.
Domestic cats have taken this kitten
to mother signal to a whole new level.
When two cats approach each other,
one may raise their tail straight-up.
If the other is willing to coexist,
it will respond in the same way.
So it's meaning two things.
It's meaning friendly intentions.
"I'm approaching you in a friendly way.
I'm not about to attack you."
And it's also acknowledging a
difference in status, if you like.
I'm not saying that cats have
a mental conception,
an abstract conception of status.
But they clearly do need to indicate the
type of interaction they want to happen.
So what they're saying is, "I'm
friendly towards you and I acknowledge
that you are in some way
bigger or smarter than I am."
Studying feral cats has given
us more than new insights
into their social relations.
Comparing DNA from various species
of cats, wild, feral and domestic,
large and small,
from all over the world
helped solve the mystery
of how cats evolved
and eventually became domesticated.
So a wild cat, the ancestor
of the domestic cat,
is a species called Felis Silvestris.
Felis Silvestris is a very
broad ranging species
that branches all the way from
the tip of Scotland down to
the Cape of Good Hope in
South Africa.
All the way from Portugal
out to the center of China.
And there are five different
wild sub-species
of Felis Silvestris, the wild cat.
One of those sub-species,
Felis Silvestris Lybica,
lived in the Near East.
And it's that sub-species that
gave rise to the domestic cat.
Professor Driscoll pinpointed
this part of the Mid-East
as the center where
Felis Silvestris Lybica
gradually transformed into the
familiar kitty, Felis Catus.
Domestic cats of every breed,
friendly or feral,
wherever in the world you find
them, have their genesis here.
Their wildcat ancestors can still
be spotted outside the cities.
But since they prefer to hunt
in the dark
it's a lot easier if you have
local biologists to guide you.
Fox...
This fish farm is a popular
hunting spot.
But tonight there are
no wild cats to be found.
These are Jungle Cats,
the largest member of the family
that includes both the domestic cat
and their ancestor, the wildcat.
They are drawn here
by the promise of an easy meal.
Last night on some fishponds
here, bordering the Jordan
we saw Felis Chaus,
the jungle cat.
And we saw how they're
becoming habituated.
They're accustomed to human presence
and they're following a path similar
to what the wild cats did,
where they're moving in out
of the wild,
and they're utilizing human
habitats and human resources
in a way that's probably very similar
to what the wildcats would have done
thousands of years ago in their
early stages of domestication.
The first step in cat
domestication happened here
thanks to a unique combination of a small
wild cat that could tolerate people
and an abundance of wild grains.
This is the habitat where plants
and animals were domesticated,
prior to what we see now.
Something around 15-16 thousand
years ago to 10 thousand years ago
people were hunter gatherers.
They had enough to collect
and use it for their own use.
Once people became settled that's when
cats began to move into that environment
and began to adapt themselves
to that human environment
and then from there
they eventually evolved
into the domestic animals
they we have today.
So in that sense you can say
that cat domesticated human.
He came over to where the humans were
and took advantage of what they..
The environments we made. Yeah.
Some people think we
domesticated cats
so they could control the
rodents that ate our grain.
Professor Driscoll doesn't agree.
He doesn't believe it was mice and
rats that drew them into our homes,
it was our garbage.
The scene we see here is one
that's played out here in Jerusalem
and other cities of the ancient
near east many thousands of times
over the last tens of millennia.
You have cats that are making
use of human waste and scraps.
Essentially being fed by people.
It's by this process that the wild cat
was brought in to human civilizations
and developed over time into
the domestic cat we have today.
Cats found our settlements a
profitable place to hang out.
So do cats catch mice and rats?
Yeah, certainly they do, and
some of them are not bad at it,
but that's not why they were domesticated.
They were domesticated accidentally.
When people in a later age decided
they really wanted to get rid
of mice and rats,
they used dogs as
specific hunters of vermin.
But what did we gain from this
arrangement if it wasn't vermin control?
Cats didn't have a purpose then,
they don't have a purpose now,
I'm not sure they'll ever
have a purpose,
but they're good pets and
that seems to have been enough
to bring them all the way
around the world.
Perhaps we'll never know,
but those initial inter-species
contacts grew into admiration and more.
The ancient Egyptians adored
and even worshiped their cats.
Egypt was the first place that
cats were bred in captivity.
It's the place where domestic
cats lived in high enough density
that they're well represented in
artwork and archaeological remains
throughout common people's houses.
When cats were first domesticated,
probably for half their domestication,
maybe the first five thousand years,
they would have all looked like wild cats,
that is the striped tabby.
That is the wild type coat color.
The first changes in the
cat's coat color
were probably the appearance
of black cats.
Which is just, in fact,
the absence of color,
the coat goes black because the
genes creating the tabby pattern
don't work properly any more.
And that probably
occurred in Egypt early on.
So you find very few cats or records of
cats outside of early Egypt at that time.
However, the City of Alexandria was a
very large port city in the ancient world
and cats were able to spread from
ancient Egypt throughout all of Europe
and North Africa in a very
brief period of time.
And so domestic cats boarded
ships that would carry them
from their Mid-Eastern birthplace
to every continent on the planet.
As they spread around the globe,
new coat colors appeared.
One of them closely linked to,
of all things, the Vikings.
Somewhere along the line some population
of Vikings decided they liked orange cats.
Why orange cats were favored is not
clear. They're not any better mousers.
They're not any more adept
at living on boats.
But what you find is
the frequency of orange cats
is higher where
the Vikings were trading.
Ginger or orange cats
are still most common
exactly in those areas where the
Vikings most frequently made landfall.
Over time new coat colors appeared
and spread, most often by ship.
I think one of the best coat-color
variations that we know about,
where there is an association between
trade routes and a coat color,
is with the blotched tabby.
And we know that, that mutation arose
in Great Britain in the early 1800s.
That was the beginning both of modern
cat breeding, and the cat show.
Cat breeding has been going on for over
a century now of actually breeding true.
So crossing like with like,
forming breeds which,
essentially where the offspring
look just like the parents.
And these have been
essentially formed from
a number of different street cats
from different parts of the world.
Unlike dogs that were bred
for a wide range of jobs
and so come in all different
sizes and shapes,
cats didn't have any special
tasks to accomplish.
And the variation has really
just been in appearance.
Some of it's to do with head shape,
obviously you have some of
the breeds like the Persians
with the very flattened face.
You have a great many variations
of coat color and length.
So many of these breeds are really
superficially different from
your average pet cat rather than
being very different functionally.
Some of us prefer
a particular coat color
thinking it's linked
to certain behaviors.
Many believe that orange cats
are easy-going and friendly,
while white cats are lazy or shy
and calicos are thought
to be feisty or difficult.
Calicos are somewhat renowned for their
temperaments they make wonderful pets.
But they don't tend to adjust very well
to new environments and new people.
But the connection between genes,
coat color and behavior
is far from clear.
There is some genetic link.
The genes haven't been isolated
so nobody knows for sure.
But the how's and whys of temperament
are increasingly important.
Cats are instinctively
solitary predators
who patrol the hunting ground
around their homes.
Now we want them to stay indoors, not
hunt and to live with other animals.
Perhaps the most serious misconception
that people have of their cats,
at least as far as its impact
on the cat is concerned,
is this idea that cats get along.
That having one cat is good, having two
cats could not be anything but better.
Now it may be better for the owner,
but the likelihood is that it's not
going to be better for the cats.
That if they're not introduced
to one another very carefully,
then those two cats will end
up being more stressed
for the rest of their lives than they
would have been if they lived apart.
For every household
where cats happily co-exist
there are many others
where our pets suffer
because of the proximity of rivals.
Living with other cats is not the most
difficult demand we are suddenly placing
on the instincts of our
favorite pets.
There's no doubt we love them.
But there are some behaviors
that most of us could do without.
Where we once took pride
in their talents as hunters,
now we are ashamed of their
seemingly ferocious nature.
It's certainly true that cats have been
getting a lot of bad press recently
in terms of their role as
hunters, as surplus killers,
animals which go out and kill for the
fun of it as people would have it.
The first thing to dispel is that
they're not doing it for the fun of it.
They're doing it because it's a
piece of very instinctive behavior
that they've inherited
from their wild ancestors.
And more than that, during domestication
we've actually encouraged
them to continue to do that.
And there is concern
about the long term effects
of our cats on wildlife populations.
However, Bradshaw thinks that our pets
are only a small part of the problem.
He believes a larger part
may be due to feral cats.
But nevertheless,
a dead bird is a dead bird,
I think you have to admit that cats are
doing something which is unnecessary
It may not be permanently
damaging to the populations
but it, if you are concerned
for the welfare of wildlife
and many people are, then cats are
not really doing the right thing.
A lot of slaughter or a little?
Can't we just eliminate it
by keeping our cats inside
where they will also be safe
from predators, fights, and traffic?
There's a really big debate
on whether
people should keep their cats
indoors or outdoors.
And certainly outdoors will provide the
cat with more environmental enrichment,
in terms of being able to explore
the outdoor environment.
The problem with being an outdoor
cat, I would say, is that there are
significantly more health
risks out there,
so they are more likely
to get attacked by other animals,
they are more likely to get into fights
with other cats, they can get hit by cars.
Asking our cats to stay indoors is
not as straightforward as it seems.
We expect them to be happy and the
reality is because they are hunters,
they need to have stimulation,
they need to be doing things
and what's happening now is
we're starting to recognize that
they're anxious or bored
in their indoor environment.
For thousands of years we had
a mutual understanding, a contract.
Suddenly we want to rewrite
the terms.
We are asking these territorial
creatures to tolerate other animals,
live happily inside and
abandon hunting.
We're expecting the cat to make a
big change from being essentially
a predator that we kept in
our homes
and got some companionship from
as a secondary function to being an animal
which is first and foremost a companion
and really nothing else.
We don't want it to go hunting.
I think if the cat is going to persist
as a popular companion animal
it is going to have to change
in some way.
The key to the survival of the domestic
cat may already be in their genes.
If their wild nature is hard wired,
so is their adaptability.
It's made our 10,000 year long
journey together possible.
They've thrived under our thatched roofs,
in our palaces, barns and apartments.
And it will guarantee these
little lions
a comfortable place in our
lives for a long time to come.
They're the most popular
pet in the world.
Cute, cuddly, and fun, but in
every way built for the hunt.
One of the big appeals to me about
cats, is that they are these little,
little wild creatures that
we share our space with.
Is that touch of the wild
what we most admire?
Or something we want to change?
Can these superlative hunters
ever truly be domesticated?
I think the cat, if it's going to
persist as a popular companion animal
is going to have to change in
some way.
What do you really know about
the lion in your living room?
A solitary hunter.
One of nature's most capable predators.
A symbol of grace, balance,
and elegance.
It's hard to believe that
these clumsy kittens
have inherited the hunting prowess
of their wild ancestors.
Kittens play a great deal
and it's one of the things
that people find very appealing
about them, enchanting even.
Kitten play is really just
a whole load of hunting type
ideas where they're
pouncing on things.
In the wild, play hunting would
soon give way to the real thing.
Powerful muscles, flexible bodies,
sharp claws, the sensitive paws,
even the delicate whiskers
all play a role
in the graceful movements
of a true hunter.
Surprisingly, the cat's elegant walk is
not very efficient, compared to a dog's.
Their gait evolved,
not to save energy
but provide the stealth
to hide and strike.
The same evolutionary demands have
shaped some of the cats' cutest behaviors
like the instinct to find a
safe place to hide from enemies
and to leap out at prey.
Climbing a tree in pursuit of
dinner can prove dangerous.
One slip could end in disaster.
Even if they fall upside down
they can turn and land on their feet
in as little as 40 centimeters.
That's not as simple as it sounds.
In fact at first it seems to
defy the laws of physics.
As the cat begins falling,
her legs rotate
allowing her to perform a seemingly
impossible mid-air adjustment,
all in a fraction of a second.
Before hitting the ground all four legs
reach out to act as shock absorbers.
An ability useful for survival,
in forest or high-rise jungle
where their curiosity can
trip them up.
I'm Dr. Koharik Arman,
one of the veterinarians here
at Cats Only Veterinarian Clinic
located in Vancouver, BC.
This is the time of the year
now that we start to see
what's called high-rise syndrome.
And what that refers to is cats
falling or jumping off of balconies
and then ending up with injuries.
Sometimes they come out unscathed
and people always joke about
those nine lives that cats have,
and sometimes that seems that
there's a bit of truth to that.
Cats can fall from really quite high
buildings and they've got a very effective
and, presumably, completely
instinctive, spontaneous
and very rapid strategy
for dealing with that.
If they are.. Do feel themselves
falling a long distance
they actually are able to parachute,
they stick their legs out,
literally sideways, which then
stretches the skin of the belly,
which does slow their
progress downwards.
Like their large carnivore cousins,
domestic cats spend most of
their time between hunts resting.
They spend at least
half their time asleep.
But when they move,
they can move quickly.
A house cat can run almost 50 kilometers
an hour, at least for a short burst.
And they have some
unique physical features
that can get them out
of tight spaces.
They have what are called
floating clavicles,
so their collar bones are not
fixed in place to their skeleton,
they're floating in their muscles and
that's how they can squeeze themselves
into and out of very narrow spaces.
And also they have a compressible rib
cage, which helps in that department too.
A cat's evolutionary history
as a predator
that stalks and pounces for
the kill
is evident in how they play, how they
move, and even in how their senses work.
I'm Dr. Kelly St. Denis.
I own the Charing Cross Cat Clinic.
It's an all cat clinic which makes
a really nice environment for us
and especially for the cats. So these
kittens were born seven days ago.
When kittens are they
are able to smell fairly well
so that allows them to find the nipple
so that they can nurse and get milk.
They don't really hear very well, and
they certainly can't see at newborn age,
their ears are flapped down
and their eyes are closed.
At about five days of age they are able
to hear and very gradually we can see
that their earflaps are
starting to come up
so that they will be able to hear
much better by three weeks of age.
Despite being born deaf,
it's their sense of hearing that
best reveals their wild ancestry.
A cat's ears can swivel to help
them locate the source of a sound,
pointing backwards,
forwards or sideways.
Once mature, they can hear
two octaves higher than a human
and a full octave higher
even than a dog.
Cats can hear the squeaks of mice.
And it's probably very useful to
them in hunting where they can hear,
what we call ultrasound, which
is being generated by their prey
and enables them to.. To track down
their prey and locate it better.
Their ability to hear ultrasonic squeaks
too high pitched for human ears,
isn't the biggest surprise.
Based on their physiology, they shouldn't
be able to hear the low frequencies.
To a biologist the really remarkable
thing about a cat's hearing
is not that it can
hear the squeaks of mice,
but that it can hear human voices, in
particular low-pitched male human voices.
Come. Good boy.
Which the size of its head
and the size of its ears,
therefore dictates that it
shouldn't be able to hear.
It's not only the range of their hearing
that makes cats successful hunters.
Something which I think many people
don't appreciate about the cat
which is that it has a
very good sense of smell.
Everybody thinks that dogs are the
species with the amazing sense of smell
and of course that is true.
But cats are still about a thousand
times more sensitive than we are.
The area inside the nose
dedicated to trapping smells
is five times larger in
domestic cats than in humans.
While we have perhaps
five million scent receptors,
the cat has 60 million or more.
What many cat owners don't appreciate
is that that cats actually
have two olfactory systems.
So you have the regular one, which
is the same one that we have,
where air is drawn in through the
nose and over the olfactory membranes.
But, also, in common with
many other mammals,
cats have a thing called
a vomeronasal organ,
which is another olfactory organ.
the organ itself lies between the
roof of the mouth and the nostrils.
And they're used, this olfactory
apparatus, the vomeronasal organ
is used when sniffing other cats.
Smell and hearing are important
to locate prey,
but vision provides more
detailed information.
In about seven to fourteen
days their eyes will open
and they'll start to be able
to see.
They won't be able to see very well
until they're about four months of age,
at which point their vision will be
approximately as they would for an adult.
They can hunt in the day or night,
but their eyes reveal that
they prefer low light.
Cat's pupils have evolved to
protect their sensitive retinas.
They also have these vertically
constricting pupils,
as opposed to our round ones.
This allows their pupillary
size to change very quickly
from contracted to dilated
depending on what they're doing,
These well-protected eyes
look out on a world
that's very different
than the one we see.
Cat's vision is pretty different
from our own.
They don't see as much in
the way of color as we do.
They see mostly blues and greys.
They don't differentiate well between
orange and brown and red and green,
but they have a few advantages
that we don't.
They can see colors that
we can't, like ultraviolet.
Perfect for tracking
their prey's urine trails.
And these aren't the only ways
in which the cats' eyes
are adapted to hunting in the dark.
Everybody has generally seen
those reflective eyes at night
or in photos and that is because
of a special area on their retina,
the back of the eye, called the tapetum
lucidum and it acts almost like a mirror.
It's iridescent and basically
bounces light off of it
so that then it has a second
chance to go through the lens,
basically enabling kitties to bring
more light into their vision
than is actually in the room
and see in the dark.
The cat's night vision allows
it to hunt in the dark.
But their eyes don't work
well at close range.
What that means is things, as they
approach the cat, will go out of focus.
Probably around six to eight
inches away from the cat's nose,
it starts to go out of focus.
And also they lose binocular
vision at that point.
They start seeing double, the
things that are close to them.
When the prey is close enough, their
whiskers can feel it's exact location.
Whiskers are thicker than
other hairs
and are full of blood vessels
and sensitive nerve endings.
Each of these specialized
hairs transmits information
about how fast and how far
it's being bent.
Allowing them to chase prey through
the twists and turns of narrow tunnels,
even in total darkness.
This is Oswald. He is a
neutered male purebred Ragdoll
and he's been coming to
us since he was a kitten.
The whiskers that most people
are familiar with in cats
are the ones that are at the
side of their cheeks.
They also have whiskers or vibrissae
is the other name for these,
above their eyes.
Cats also have whiskers
on the inside of their paws.
These whiskers also help
with the spatial orientation.
It helps them to know where they
can move to and what types of spaces.
Even the cats' tongue has its secrets.
Elegant creatures, they don't
lap up their drink like a dog.
Looking closely, her tongue appears to
corkscrew as the liquid is drawn up.
If you've ever been licked by
a cat,
you've felt an irritating
sandpaper like rasp.
It's not the taste buds you feel,
but tiny barbs down the center
of the tongue.
Cats spend about 25% of their
waking hours grooming themselves.
He's actually washing himself or
trying to wash himself on his paws.
Cats have papillae on their
tongue that are quite rough
which will help them with their grooming
to keep their coats healthy and mat free.
These act like combs
when the cat is grooming,
or like knives when stripping the
last scraps of meat from a bone.
The cat's sense of taste is kind
of similar to ours in some ways
because it is basically the
same mammalian pattern of taste.
They taste with taste receptors
on their tongues.
But in many ways it ends there.
The kinds of things that the
cat's tongue is sensitive to
are really quite different to ours.
And those differences
are because this little lion
is a hunter who has evolved
to need only meat in her diet.
They absolutely don't have
the capacity to taste sweets
because they're obligate carnivores,
they really aren't meant to ingest
anything that has a sweet taste to it,
so it just doesn't serve
a purpose for them.
It turns out that even the cats'
reputation for being a finicky eater
is about being a hunter.
At first it may seem like a bad idea for
a wild creature to be picky about food,
especially an animal
whose diet is so restricted.
We now know that our domestic pet
cats do have nutritional wisdom.
They are capable of picking out
which of a number of diets
has the best protein content,
because cats need a great
deal of protein in their diets.
Far more than almost any
other animal.
And they also have a strategy
for addressing potential,
future nutritional imbalances,
which is to go out and look
for something to eat
that is not the same as
the last meal you had.
That's partly behind the cat's
kind of notorious fussiness.
Rescued from a life of hunting
and scavenging,
this cat remains very picky
about the treats that she selects.
It's much more exaggerated,
much more easy to detect
in cats which have had to live
on the streets, if you like.
That have had to select a balanced
diet in order to survive and breed
rather than simply being offered
nutritionally complete food
by their owners.
They are much fussier about what
they eat than pet cats would,
if you can believe that.
Born deaf, blind and helpless,
in the wild all that keeps them from
becoming prey to larger predators
is their mother's care.
Getting that can
sometimes prove difficult.
Accidently pushed out of the nest, this
kitten instinctively cries for help.
Fortunately, her mother notices.
Whether lions or leopards,
it's only the very young
in most cat species who meow,
and then only to their mothers.
But domestic cats use
this sound in other situations
when they want attention
mostly when communicating
with humans.
Come on Jesse!
Jesse, I have a treat for you.
Do you want that?
All meows are not equal.
Every cat has their own.
Come here. You want some din-dins?
These are sounds that
can have many meanings.
Each cat and their humans
must somehow agree on definitions.
Some develop a large vocabulary.
So they'll have one meow
for I'm hungry, feed me.
And another one for please let
me out the door and so on.
And these seem to be private
languages that develop
between the cat and the owner.
We know this because if you
record these different meows
and then play them back
to different owners,
the owner of the cat, of that particular
cat will instantly recognize them.
"That's the meow he makes when
he wants to be let out.
That's the one he makes
when he's hungry."
But played to other cat's owners,
even the owners of cats which
have a repertoire of meows
and they can't identify which
is which.
Beyond meowing, cats have a
number of vocal signals,
not that we always understand them.
This cat has no need to hunt
for a meal.
Still the old urges are there and they
occasionally surface in surprising ways.
Some cats make a special
chattering sound
when they are hunting or thinking
how much they'd like to be.
It's not known exactly
why some cats chatter.
Whether it's frustration,
anticipation of the kill,
or an attempt to lure prey
by imitation.
Other sounds they
make are less mysterious.
When they're quite unhappy
we can see growling and hissing,
also certain vocalizing that.. That
sounds almost basically like a caterwaul,
a yowl, essentially, that's a very
unhappy and very stimulated cat.
But, fortunately for us Sybil right now
is very content and purring away happily.
Purring is another sound
we associate with cats.
Strangely we know little
about it.
Most people think that purring
is an expression of emotion
as far as the cat's concerned,
that the cat is happy.
And 9 times out of 10 that's true but
it's not the reason for the purring.
It's doing it to try to get you or another
cat indeed to do something for it.
So kittens purr in order to get their
mother to settle down and nurse them.
And so that piece of communication
goes on and is carried on into adulthood.
Large members of the cat family,
like lions and tigers, can't purr.
The roaring cats don't purr,
but some of the smaller cats purr.
I mean, in fact, the ability to roar,
sort of produces a change in the,
in the vocal apparatus,
which means that you can't purr.
Karen McComb studies
animal communication,
in large animals,
like elephants, and lions.
Then her own cat piqued her interest
in this apparently simple sound.
This came about simply because
my own cat
was very adept at soliciting
food from me.
And, in particular he had this
sort of wake up purring routine
where he would start giving this
very insistent purring in the morning.
I thought why is it that
this particular purring is so,
sort of, unpleasant to the ear?
Why is it that it's, it does sound urgent
and it's--it's so difficult to ignore?
Professor McComb compared the purrs
of a number of cats including her own.
So, this is the non-solicitation purr from
my cat and you'll see that it's actually,
it's a very regular purring,
classical purring type sound.
In fact, this purr was rated as one
of the most pleasant of all the cats.
So, what I'm going to do is play you
the solicitation purr from my own cat.
And you should be able to hear
that within the purr
there's a sort of
a slightly whiny element.
Incredibly, Professor McComb
discovered that this solicitation purr
was at a similar frequency
to the cry of a human baby.
So it's got this sort of
slightly manic element to it.
And if you look at the
screen here
you'll see there's a dark
band at,
in his case it's a bit over
400 hertz,
but that is the sort of
cry like frequency.
And it's there very strongly
in each of the main beats of
the purr.
So that there is a frequency
that sort of,
jumping out of the rest of the sound
spectrum, at the point of this cry.
And the cats have somehow tapped in
to this sensory bias that we've got
and are using it to improve
the level of care they get.
Solitary hunters who can get another
species to do their bidding.
Their dual nature fascinates us.
We watch them contentedly
rolling at our feet one moment,
slinking off who knows
where the next.
Unlike dogs, cats have another
life usually hidden from us.
Now, thanks to modern technology
we are getting a glimpse
into the secret lives of cats.
Studies reveal that most
have a pretty defined turf,
an area they patrol on a
daily basis.
Often not much more than a
few blocks.
Of course there are exceptions, brave
explorers who travel great distances.
This is our kitty, Kinter.
He lives with a dog, Ruby.
We've been tracking Kinter's adventures.
Sometimes they need to go no further
than a neighbor to get an extra treat.
You know what, he comes here and
he visits us almost every day.
Does he really?
Yes, we love him.
He sits with my mom and dad.
Does he really?
Yeah, he sits with us
and takes his little nap,
and we feed him cheese or little bits
of bacon and ham almost every day.
A cat's daily patrols are
anything but random.
It's a way for them to mark
and guard their turf.
Even if you've never seen what happens
when there's a conflict over territory,
you've almost certainly
heard the results.
Studies find that cats often share
the same, or overlapping territories.
They simply avoid patrolling at the
same time, like feline timesharing.
Running into rivals isn't the only danger
facing cats living on the streets.
The survival of great numbers
of stray cats, and feral cats,
that have never known
human companionship,
proves their wild nature
has been preserved.
These undomesticated domestic cats
give us the best vantage point
for understanding how
these once wild animals
adapted to life with humans.
Cats certainly are not
domesticated completely.
They are.. They are like
little wild creatures
and they still have the
capacity to exist without us.
You would be hard-pressed
to find a Maltese
or a teacup Chihuahua who could
make it on his own,
on the street and forage and
for food and seek shelter
and reproduce and all the rest.
But cats are a whole other story.
Many cities are struggling with large
populations of cats that live all,
or some of the time on the street.
Dealing with the feral cat explosion is
often left up to concerned neighbors.
The thing that means the most is feeling
that when you bring a cat off the street
that you see has either
been lost, abandoned,
shoved aside, pregnant
because they didn't want her.
Bringing that cat in,
seeing it in a home, flourish,
respond to love and affection,
that's the best thing in the world.
We do a lot of work with the City
of Toronto and other organizations,
Toronto Humane Society,
and we have to figure out how to deal with
the feral cat overpopulation in the city.
Hi mew mews.
They visit the feral cat colony, get
to know who's who and how they relate.
Come on guys, breakfast.
We were called to this colony by
a gentleman who was feeding cats
in a field and we were called
out to help.
So when we came here,
when we came to the site,
we found way more cats
than we ever imagined.
Now there's probably 15 cats
left give or take.
When we got here there was probably
closer to 40, 45 with kittens,
and we started trap, neuter, return.
They feed them regularly, trap
them, have their injuries treated,
and most importantly have
them neutered.
They may be the same species as
the animals who live in our homes
but if they aren't exposed
to a human touch early enough
they will remain untamable.
Cats who have not had socialization
with humans prior to 14 weeks of age,
they are much more prone
to be very fearful.
Not want to approach humans.
Take a very long
time to establish trust.
And are also more prone
to being fearfully aggressive.
It's not that they can't learn to trust
humans, that capacity is still there
and they still do retain
some behavioral plasticity.
But it can be a very long road.
We do have patients who were feral cats,
then when they were rescued and taken in
by their people took a matter
of months to years actually
before they established
trust with their owners.
Those who can learn to tolerate
humans can be put up for adoption.
Like these looking as
domestic as can be,
successfully adopted
from a feral colony.
Cats that live without
humans for too long
don't easily adapt to life
with us.
One solution is to give them shelters
where they can receive
medical attention
and live in relative comfort.
My name's Janet Reed, and I'm the manager
here at the number six road shelter
for the Richmond Animal
Protection Society.
And what we have here is
about 500 cats
that we take care of
because they're homeless.
They were cats that were born in
the wild, have never had a home,
or maybe were dumped
and were living in the wild.
We trap them, we spay and neuter them
and we make sure they have their shots
and vet care and then we bring them
in here so they have a place to be.
We put them in colonies.
If they come 10, 15 at a time,
which has happened to us.
It's a lot of cats to deal with
but we keep them together.
They know each other.
We don't have to try and adapt them
to the rest of the cats at the shelter.
And despite what everybody seems
to think this is not a cat Club Med.
Cats don't necessarily always
get along with each other.
When the environment enables
them to,
they will live together
and establish a hierarchy.
And generally that does mean that
there's some hissing and posturing
and fighting for a while until
that has been established.
Then if new cats try to enter,
it's possible for them to integrate
themselves,
but there will be a few tests
along the way.
But then other times a new cat
is completely shunned
and doesn't manage to work
their way into a colony.
Observing feral colonies tells
us about the nature of these
very territorial animals,
and their social lives.
Maintaining limits and alliances
requires constant communication.
Messages of all kinds
being sent and received,
displays of warning
and acknowledgment.
One key social signal
is the straight-up tail.
We think that the tail-up
signal evolved
from a signal that kittens use
to signal to their mothers.
They use this around
the--the time of weaning
and it's seen in a number
of wildcat species.
Not just the wildcat that's
the ancestor of the domestic cat.
And they're probably using this
as a way of greeting their mother
when she returns to the nest
with food for them.
And it may be one of the ways they
have of persuading her to feed them.
But in all those other species, they then
stop doing it once they reach adulthood.
Domestic cats have taken this kitten
to mother signal to a whole new level.
When two cats approach each other,
one may raise their tail straight-up.
If the other is willing to coexist,
it will respond in the same way.
So it's meaning two things.
It's meaning friendly intentions.
"I'm approaching you in a friendly way.
I'm not about to attack you."
And it's also acknowledging a
difference in status, if you like.
I'm not saying that cats have
a mental conception,
an abstract conception of status.
But they clearly do need to indicate the
type of interaction they want to happen.
So what they're saying is, "I'm
friendly towards you and I acknowledge
that you are in some way
bigger or smarter than I am."
Studying feral cats has given
us more than new insights
into their social relations.
Comparing DNA from various species
of cats, wild, feral and domestic,
large and small,
from all over the world
helped solve the mystery
of how cats evolved
and eventually became domesticated.
So a wild cat, the ancestor
of the domestic cat,
is a species called Felis Silvestris.
Felis Silvestris is a very
broad ranging species
that branches all the way from
the tip of Scotland down to
the Cape of Good Hope in
South Africa.
All the way from Portugal
out to the center of China.
And there are five different
wild sub-species
of Felis Silvestris, the wild cat.
One of those sub-species,
Felis Silvestris Lybica,
lived in the Near East.
And it's that sub-species that
gave rise to the domestic cat.
Professor Driscoll pinpointed
this part of the Mid-East
as the center where
Felis Silvestris Lybica
gradually transformed into the
familiar kitty, Felis Catus.
Domestic cats of every breed,
friendly or feral,
wherever in the world you find
them, have their genesis here.
Their wildcat ancestors can still
be spotted outside the cities.
But since they prefer to hunt
in the dark
it's a lot easier if you have
local biologists to guide you.
Fox...
This fish farm is a popular
hunting spot.
But tonight there are
no wild cats to be found.
These are Jungle Cats,
the largest member of the family
that includes both the domestic cat
and their ancestor, the wildcat.
They are drawn here
by the promise of an easy meal.
Last night on some fishponds
here, bordering the Jordan
we saw Felis Chaus,
the jungle cat.
And we saw how they're
becoming habituated.
They're accustomed to human presence
and they're following a path similar
to what the wild cats did,
where they're moving in out
of the wild,
and they're utilizing human
habitats and human resources
in a way that's probably very similar
to what the wildcats would have done
thousands of years ago in their
early stages of domestication.
The first step in cat
domestication happened here
thanks to a unique combination of a small
wild cat that could tolerate people
and an abundance of wild grains.
This is the habitat where plants
and animals were domesticated,
prior to what we see now.
Something around 15-16 thousand
years ago to 10 thousand years ago
people were hunter gatherers.
They had enough to collect
and use it for their own use.
Once people became settled that's when
cats began to move into that environment
and began to adapt themselves
to that human environment
and then from there
they eventually evolved
into the domestic animals
they we have today.
So in that sense you can say
that cat domesticated human.
He came over to where the humans were
and took advantage of what they..
The environments we made. Yeah.
Some people think we
domesticated cats
so they could control the
rodents that ate our grain.
Professor Driscoll doesn't agree.
He doesn't believe it was mice and
rats that drew them into our homes,
it was our garbage.
The scene we see here is one
that's played out here in Jerusalem
and other cities of the ancient
near east many thousands of times
over the last tens of millennia.
You have cats that are making
use of human waste and scraps.
Essentially being fed by people.
It's by this process that the wild cat
was brought in to human civilizations
and developed over time into
the domestic cat we have today.
Cats found our settlements a
profitable place to hang out.
So do cats catch mice and rats?
Yeah, certainly they do, and
some of them are not bad at it,
but that's not why they were domesticated.
They were domesticated accidentally.
When people in a later age decided
they really wanted to get rid
of mice and rats,
they used dogs as
specific hunters of vermin.
But what did we gain from this
arrangement if it wasn't vermin control?
Cats didn't have a purpose then,
they don't have a purpose now,
I'm not sure they'll ever
have a purpose,
but they're good pets and
that seems to have been enough
to bring them all the way
around the world.
Perhaps we'll never know,
but those initial inter-species
contacts grew into admiration and more.
The ancient Egyptians adored
and even worshiped their cats.
Egypt was the first place that
cats were bred in captivity.
It's the place where domestic
cats lived in high enough density
that they're well represented in
artwork and archaeological remains
throughout common people's houses.
When cats were first domesticated,
probably for half their domestication,
maybe the first five thousand years,
they would have all looked like wild cats,
that is the striped tabby.
That is the wild type coat color.
The first changes in the
cat's coat color
were probably the appearance
of black cats.
Which is just, in fact,
the absence of color,
the coat goes black because the
genes creating the tabby pattern
don't work properly any more.
And that probably
occurred in Egypt early on.
So you find very few cats or records of
cats outside of early Egypt at that time.
However, the City of Alexandria was a
very large port city in the ancient world
and cats were able to spread from
ancient Egypt throughout all of Europe
and North Africa in a very
brief period of time.
And so domestic cats boarded
ships that would carry them
from their Mid-Eastern birthplace
to every continent on the planet.
As they spread around the globe,
new coat colors appeared.
One of them closely linked to,
of all things, the Vikings.
Somewhere along the line some population
of Vikings decided they liked orange cats.
Why orange cats were favored is not
clear. They're not any better mousers.
They're not any more adept
at living on boats.
But what you find is
the frequency of orange cats
is higher where
the Vikings were trading.
Ginger or orange cats
are still most common
exactly in those areas where the
Vikings most frequently made landfall.
Over time new coat colors appeared
and spread, most often by ship.
I think one of the best coat-color
variations that we know about,
where there is an association between
trade routes and a coat color,
is with the blotched tabby.
And we know that, that mutation arose
in Great Britain in the early 1800s.
That was the beginning both of modern
cat breeding, and the cat show.
Cat breeding has been going on for over
a century now of actually breeding true.
So crossing like with like,
forming breeds which,
essentially where the offspring
look just like the parents.
And these have been
essentially formed from
a number of different street cats
from different parts of the world.
Unlike dogs that were bred
for a wide range of jobs
and so come in all different
sizes and shapes,
cats didn't have any special
tasks to accomplish.
And the variation has really
just been in appearance.
Some of it's to do with head shape,
obviously you have some of
the breeds like the Persians
with the very flattened face.
You have a great many variations
of coat color and length.
So many of these breeds are really
superficially different from
your average pet cat rather than
being very different functionally.
Some of us prefer
a particular coat color
thinking it's linked
to certain behaviors.
Many believe that orange cats
are easy-going and friendly,
while white cats are lazy or shy
and calicos are thought
to be feisty or difficult.
Calicos are somewhat renowned for their
temperaments they make wonderful pets.
But they don't tend to adjust very well
to new environments and new people.
But the connection between genes,
coat color and behavior
is far from clear.
There is some genetic link.
The genes haven't been isolated
so nobody knows for sure.
But the how's and whys of temperament
are increasingly important.
Cats are instinctively
solitary predators
who patrol the hunting ground
around their homes.
Now we want them to stay indoors, not
hunt and to live with other animals.
Perhaps the most serious misconception
that people have of their cats,
at least as far as its impact
on the cat is concerned,
is this idea that cats get along.
That having one cat is good, having two
cats could not be anything but better.
Now it may be better for the owner,
but the likelihood is that it's not
going to be better for the cats.
That if they're not introduced
to one another very carefully,
then those two cats will end
up being more stressed
for the rest of their lives than they
would have been if they lived apart.
For every household
where cats happily co-exist
there are many others
where our pets suffer
because of the proximity of rivals.
Living with other cats is not the most
difficult demand we are suddenly placing
on the instincts of our
favorite pets.
There's no doubt we love them.
But there are some behaviors
that most of us could do without.
Where we once took pride
in their talents as hunters,
now we are ashamed of their
seemingly ferocious nature.
It's certainly true that cats have been
getting a lot of bad press recently
in terms of their role as
hunters, as surplus killers,
animals which go out and kill for the
fun of it as people would have it.
The first thing to dispel is that
they're not doing it for the fun of it.
They're doing it because it's a
piece of very instinctive behavior
that they've inherited
from their wild ancestors.
And more than that, during domestication
we've actually encouraged
them to continue to do that.
And there is concern
about the long term effects
of our cats on wildlife populations.
However, Bradshaw thinks that our pets
are only a small part of the problem.
He believes a larger part
may be due to feral cats.
But nevertheless,
a dead bird is a dead bird,
I think you have to admit that cats are
doing something which is unnecessary
It may not be permanently
damaging to the populations
but it, if you are concerned
for the welfare of wildlife
and many people are, then cats are
not really doing the right thing.
A lot of slaughter or a little?
Can't we just eliminate it
by keeping our cats inside
where they will also be safe
from predators, fights, and traffic?
There's a really big debate
on whether
people should keep their cats
indoors or outdoors.
And certainly outdoors will provide the
cat with more environmental enrichment,
in terms of being able to explore
the outdoor environment.
The problem with being an outdoor
cat, I would say, is that there are
significantly more health
risks out there,
so they are more likely
to get attacked by other animals,
they are more likely to get into fights
with other cats, they can get hit by cars.
Asking our cats to stay indoors is
not as straightforward as it seems.
We expect them to be happy and the
reality is because they are hunters,
they need to have stimulation,
they need to be doing things
and what's happening now is
we're starting to recognize that
they're anxious or bored
in their indoor environment.
For thousands of years we had
a mutual understanding, a contract.
Suddenly we want to rewrite
the terms.
We are asking these territorial
creatures to tolerate other animals,
live happily inside and
abandon hunting.
We're expecting the cat to make a
big change from being essentially
a predator that we kept in
our homes
and got some companionship from
as a secondary function to being an animal
which is first and foremost a companion
and really nothing else.
We don't want it to go hunting.
I think if the cat is going to persist
as a popular companion animal
it is going to have to change
in some way.
The key to the survival of the domestic
cat may already be in their genes.
If their wild nature is hard wired,
so is their adaptability.
It's made our 10,000 year long
journey together possible.
They've thrived under our thatched roofs,
in our palaces, barns and apartments.
And it will guarantee these
little lions
a comfortable place in our
lives for a long time to come.