From: mdhangton@gmail.com
Will in New Haven wrote:
> On Monday, June 15, 2015 at 1:45:46 PM UTC-4, William Vetter wrote:
>> Will in New Haven wrote:
>>> On Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 8:27:59 PM UTC-4, William Vetter wrote:
>>>> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>>> In article ,
>>>>> William Vetter wrote:
>>>>>> Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
>>>>>>> "Dorothy J Heydt" wrote
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Is someone writing about the vibrissae of an aileuromorph?
>>>>>>>> Please send a link, if so.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The best Amazon can find is the facsimile reprint "The Functions Of The
>>>>>>> Vibrissae In The Behavior Of The White Rat (1912) "
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> All listed seem to be non-fiction.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you cut the rat's whiskers off, he can't find his way through a
>>>>>> maze.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you cut the cat's whiskers off, he can't locate a victim's neck in
>>>>>> the dark to kill it with a bite.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That is the importance of the vibrissae, whiskers that function as
>>>>>> sensory organs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cats score very badly in maze work anyhow. Maze work is how many
>>>>>> scientists define the intelligence of animals.
>>>>>
>>>>> That, and being willing to understand/carry out the command of
>>>>> humans. This is why some humans think dogs are more intelligent
>>>>> than cats. The dog is a pack animal and wants to cooperate with
>>>>> whoever it thinks its pack leader is.
>>>>> The cat is less social,
>>>>> more independent, and while it can become very fond of its human,
>>>>> this takes time. Thus, the cat may understand perfectly what you
>>>>> want it to do, but just can't be bothered; so you'll never know
>>>>> if it understood you or not.
>>>>
>>>> I've been reading some books by Roger Tabor. The phrase he uses is
>>>> that the cat is "not particularly hierarchical." And in terms of
>>>> hunting behavior, the dog is "a cog in the machine," and the cat "_is_
>>>> the machine."
>>>>
>>>> Well...the way I look at it is the cat, in that he is an independent
>>>> hunter, is self-employed, and really doesn't get the concept of a boss.
>>>> Cats may also operate as scavengers, although their dentition isn't
>>>> specialized for that such as, for example, the hyena.
>>>
>>> Nitpick: The hyena, if were are talking about the spotted Hyena, kills much
>>> more of its food than it scavenges. And much of its scavenging consists of
>>> taking kills away from lions in battle, not of waiting for the lions to
>>> finish eating, so their teeth are just fine for things other than
>>> scavenging.
>>>
>> Kitties don't have the great molars of the hyena for crushing bone;
>> only for tilting their heads sideways and chopping meat, so the
>> paleontologist will say the kitty is not meant to be a scavenger.
>
> There's a distinction between stealing kills and scavenging. When hyenas
> steal a kill from lions, or vice versa, there is still meat on it. Being able
> to crush the bones is useful but not necessary. The little wildcat ancestor
> of our cats could not steal kills very often.
>
>
>> Nevertheless, we presume the kitties first became village cats in
>> settlements around the Mediterranean by hitting the garbage dump. Such
>> was the early relation of kitties with humanity, outside of Egyptian
>> religion. We presume.
>
> I think it was the rodents around the granary. There were undoubtedly dogs
> around but terriers specialized for killing rodents,
Well, in those days they tried ferrets and weasels, but these were hard
to domesticate, and were most effective for rodents burrowed
underground -- not infesting human habitations.
>who are also cat-killers
> if not taught different, were far in the future, so the hunting was good.
What I was refering to above, is that when cats traveled to Grecian
colonies on boats, they found no big granaries for them to guard, and
no temples equipped with priests to feed them fish from the Nile.
>
> And the scant genetic evidence so far places the cat as descending from
> wildcats to the east of Egypt
That is felis lybica, the Libyan wildcat, which was tawny and spotted,
with a black tip on its tail (as drawn on papyrii), 2X as large as the
modern domestic cat. The modern ones are tawny, and more faintly
spotted. Feral kitties around cities in Egypt are sometimes spotted.
The breed Egyptian Mau is said to have derived from a Cairo street cat,
but it doesn't really look like the cats in the papyrii.
> , in Israel and Syria,
Not then.
> although the same species
> can be found in Egypt,
Yes.
>the rest of Africa
That is the African wildcat, another species.
> and in Europe.
That is felis sylvestris, the European wildcat, another species, which
looks like a gray tabby cat, but at least 2X as big, which interbred
with the domesticated cats from Egypt and probably gave kitties the
tabby stripes. Because they interbreed with feral cats so easily,
there are very few pureblooded European wildcats today.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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