Cat - Wikipedia

This article is set the species this is typically saved as a puppy. For the cat family, see Felidae.

The cat (Felis catus) is a home species of small carnivorous mammal.[1][2] It is the simplest domesticated species in the family Felidae and is often referred to as the home cat to differentiate it from the wild participants of the family.[four] A cat can both be a house cat, a farm cat or a feral cat; the latter ranges freely and avoids human touch.[5] Domestic cats are valued by way of people for companionship and their capability to kill rodents. About 60 cat breeds are identified by using diverse cat registries.[6]

The cat is comparable in anatomy to the other felid species: it has a sturdy bendy body, quick reflexes, sharp teeth and retractable claws tailored to killing small prey. Its night imaginative and prescient and sense of odor are nicely advanced. Cat communique consists of vocalizations like meowing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling and grunting as well as cat-particular body language. A predator that is most active at sunrise and dusk (crepuscular), the cat is a solitary hunter however a social species. It can pay attention sounds too faint or too excessive in frequency for human ears, consisting of the ones made by using mice and different small mammals.[7] Cats also secrete and understand pheromones.[8]

Female home cats will have kittens from spring to late autumn, with clutter sizes frequently starting fromto 5 kittens.[nine] Domestic cats are bred and proven at events as registered pedigreed cats, a hobby known as cat fancy. Population control of cats can be effected by way of spaying and neutering, however their proliferation and the abandonment of pets has resulted in massive numbers of feral cats global, contributing to the extinction of whole chicken, mammal, and reptile species.[10]

Cats have been first domesticated within the Near East around 7500 BC.[11] It changed into lengthy notion that cat domestication started in historical Egypt, in which cats have been venerated from round 3100 BC.[12][thirteen] As of 2021, there were an expected 220 million owned and 480 million stray cats inside the international.[14][15] As of 2017, the home cat become the second-most famous pet inside the United States, with 95.6 million cats owned[sixteen][17][18] and around 42 million households personal at least one cat.[19] In the UK, 26% of adults have a cat with an estimated population of 10.9 million puppy cats as of 2020.[20]Etymology and naming

The beginning of the English word cat, Old English catt, is notion to be the Late Latin phrase cattus, which was first used at the beginning of the 6th century.[21] It changed into recommended that the phrase 'cattus' is derived from an Egyptian precursor of Coptic ϣⲁⲩ šau, "tomcat", or its feminine shape suffixed with -t.[22]The Late Latin phrase can be derived from every other Afro-Asiatic[23] or Nilo-Saharan language. The Nubian phrase kaddîska "wildcat" and Nobiin kadīs are feasible resources or cognates.[24] The Nubian phrase may be a loan from Arabic قَطّ‎ qaṭṭ ~ قِطّ qiṭṭ. It is "equally possibly that the bureaucracy may derive from an ancient Germanic phrase, imported into Latin and thence to Greek and to Syriac and Arabic".[25] The phrase may be derived from Germanic and Northern European languages, and in the end be borrowed from Uralic, cf. Northern Sami gáđfi, "woman stoat", and Hungarian hölgy, "woman, lady stoat"; from Proto-Uralic *käďwä, "woman (of a furred animal)".[26]

The English puss, extended as pussy and tom cat, is attested from the sixteenth century and might had been delivered from Dutch poes or from Low German puuskatte, related to Swedish kattepus, or Norwegian pus, pusekatt. Similar bureaucracy exist in Lithuanian puižė and Irish puisín or puiscín. The etymology of this phrase is unknown, however it could have virtually arisen from a sound used to attract a cat.[27][28]

A male cat is referred to as a tom or tomcat[29] (or a gib,[30] if neutered). An unspayed girl is known as a queen,[31] (or a molly,[32] if spayed), especially in a cat-breeding context. A juvenile cat is known as a kitten. In Early Modern English, the phrase kitten become interchangeable with the now-obsolete phrase catling.[33] A institution of cats can be referred to as a clowder or a evident.[34]Taxonomy

The scientific call Felis catus become proposed by means of Carl Linnaeus in 1758 for a home cat.[1][2] Felis catus domesticus changed into proposed through Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben in 1777.[three] Felis daemon proposed through Konstantin Alekseevich Satunin in 1904 become a black cat from the Transcaucasus, later identified as a domestic cat.[35][36]

In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled that the home cat is a distinct species, specifically Felis catus.[37][38]In 2007, it was considered a subspecies, F. silvestris catus, of the European wildcat (F. silvestris) following outcomes of phylogenetic research.[39][40] In 2017, the IUCN Cat Classification Taskforce followed the recommendation of the ICZN in concerning the home cat as a awesome species, Felis catus.[forty one]Evolution

Skulls of a wildcat (top left), a housecat (pinnacle right), and a hybrid among the 2. (bottom middle)

The domestic cat is a member of the Felidae, a own family that had a common ancestor approximately 10–15 million years ago.[forty two]The genus Felis diverged from different Felidae round 6–7 million years ago.[forty three] Results of phylogenetic studies affirm that the wild Felis species advanced through sympatric or parapatric speciation, while the home cat advanced through artificial choice.[forty four] The domesticated cat and its closest wild ancestor are diploid and both own 38 chromosomes[45] and more or less 20,000 genes.[46] The leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) was tamed independently in China around 5500 BC. This line of partially domesticated cats leaves no trace within the domestic cat populations of nowadays.[forty seven]Domestication

A cat ingesting a fish underneath a chair, a mural in an Egyptian tomb courting to the 15th century BC

The earliest recognized indication for the taming of an African wildcat (F. lybica) became excavated close by a human Neolithic grave in Shillourokambos, southern Cyprus, courting to about 7500–7200 BC. Since there is no evidence of native mammalian fauna on Cyprus, the inhabitants of this Neolithic village maximum in all likelihood added the cat and different wild mammals to the island from the Middle Eastern mainland.[48] Scientists therefore anticipate that African wildcats had been drawn to early human settlements in the Fertile Crescent via rodents, in particular the house mouse (Mus musculus), and were tamed by means of Neolithic farmers. This mutual dating between early farmers and tamed cats lasted thousands of years. As agricultural practices unfold, so did tame and domesticated cats.[11][6] Wildcats of Egypt contributed to the maternal gene pool of the home cat at a later time.[49]

The earliest recognized proof for the incidence of the home cat in Greece dates to around 1200 BC. Greek, Phoenician, Carthaginian and Etruscan investors delivered domestic cats to southern Europe.[50] During the Roman Empire they had been brought to Corsica and Sardinia earlier than the beginning of the first millennium.[fifty one] By the fifth century BC, they had been familiar animals round settlements in Magna Graecia and Etruria.[52] By the stop of the Roman Empire within the 5th century, the Egyptian home cat lineage had arrived in a Baltic Sea port in northern Germany.[49]

During domestication, cats have undergone only minor changes in anatomy and conduct, and they're still able to surviving inside the wild. Several natural behaviors and traits of wildcats may additionally have pre-adapted them for domestication as pets. These tendencies consist of their small size, social nature, apparent frame language, love of play and comparatively excessive intelligence. Captive Leopardus cats may display affectionate conduct closer to humans however have been now not domesticated.[53] House cats often mate with feral cats,[54] producing hybrids together with the Kellas cat in Scotland.[fifty five] Hybridisation between domestic and other Felinae species is also feasible.[fifty six]