{"id":198738,"date":"2025-10-08T21:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198738\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T21:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T21:33:07","slug":"how-wild-cats-turned-into-house-cats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198738\/","title":{"rendered":"How Wild Cats Turned Into House Cats"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>Paleontologist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ddufault.com\/\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener nofollow\">Danielle Dufault<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/animalogic\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener nofollow\">Animalogic<\/a> explained how wild cats, with their ancient history of independence, became domesticated simply due to the availability of food. Once humans began to settle in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fertile_Crescent\" data-wpel-link=\"external\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener nofollow\">Fertile Crescent<\/a> around 11,000 years ago, they planted crops, which attracted mice and other critters.<\/p>\n<p>We were shifting away from\u00a0 the hunter\/gatherer lifestyle,\u00a0building settlements, and starting to grow crops\u00a0 like wheat and barley, and eventually livestock\u00a0too. \u2026That meant surpluses of grain \u2014 and where\u00a0 there\u2019s grain, there\u2019s rodents. \u2026Over time, the cats that were less\u00a0scared of humans thrived, getting more food,\u00a0\u00a0and raising more kittens. In a nutshell,\u00a0that\u2019s how wild cats turned into house cats.<\/p>\n<p>Dufault also looked at how cats actually domesticated humans with their adorable little selves.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s another factor: cuteness.\u00a0 I mean come on, look at this.Scientists call it \u201cneoteny\u201d, and it\u2019s adorable. It means keeping baby-like features into\u00a0 adulthood. Cats with round eyes, compact noses\u00a0\u00a0 nd playful movements hit our caregiving instincts\u00a0just like a human baby would, sometimes even more. These traits aren\u2019t unique to domestic animals,\u00a0but humans tend to love them, and\u00a0 that gives cats a real advantage.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1130\" height=\"636\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Wild-Cat-to-House-Cat.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Wild Cat to House Cat\" style=\"object-fit:cover;\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated Posts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paleontologist Danielle Dufault of Animalogic explained how wild cats, with their ancient history of independence, became domesticated simply&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-198738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}