First domestic cat purred in Middle East.

Laurent Thomet

Agençe France-Presse

Friday, 29 June 2007



The first cats became domesticated in the grain-growing regions of
the Middle East. They grew fat on the mice at the grain stores and
slowly became used to humans (Image: iStockphoto)
The first domestic cat was a fierce mouser that struck an enduring
friendship with farmers who settled in the Middle East 10,000 years
ago, researchers say.

Through DNA technology, the researchers say they traced the domestic
feline's ancestry back to the Near Eastern wildcat (Felis silvestris
lybica) that roamed what is today Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

The wildcat emerged from the woods as the early farmers began
settling down and developing grain stores that attracted rodents.

But it was friendlier than other members of the felidae family, says
senior author Dr Stephen O'Brien of the US National Cancer Institute.

"The felidae family is well known as a successful predator: very
deadly, very ferocious, very threatening to all species including
humankind," says O'Brien.

"But this little guy actually chose not to be that. He actually
chose to be a little bit friendly and also was a very good mouser."

The wildcat brought "two very valuable commodities" to these early
farmers, O'Brien says.

"One is, he helped dispatch the thousand or so rodents that were
living on the grain stores and second he probably provided some
amusement to the early families and their children by being
friendly," he says.

"So that was the beginning of one of the most successful biological
experiments ever undertaken, where a nasty, ferocious, deadly
predator changed its attitude and became friendly with humans."

The researchers, who publish their work today in the journal
Science, were also able to trace back the Adam and Eve of cats to
some 100,000 years ago.

O'Brien says, however, there is no archaeological evidence to show
that humans were already domesticating cats at the time.

Preserved remains show that cats were valued by Egyptians, and one
skeleton unearthed in Cyprus in 2004 showed that people were keeping
cats as pets more than 9000 years ago.


This wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica) was trapped in Israel as part
of the author's research into the origin of cat domestication. Cats
similar to this one were the likely ancestor of the domestic cat
(Image: Science)
The researchers used DNA samples from 979 cats to study the
evolutionary ties between the domestic feline and five wildcat
subspecies from three continents, including the Near Eastern
wildcat.

The researchers were able to rule out the European wildcat, the
Central Asian wildcat, the southern African wildcat and the Chinese
desert cat as the domestic feline's ancestor.

The authors found that each subspecies and domestic cats fell into a
group, or clade that was genetically distinct.

One clade includes the domestic cat and his Middle East relative,
suggesting this group stems from the ancestral founder population of
the house cat, they say.

Its descendants were then taken across the world by humans.

"All domestic cats seem to have a single common ancestor," says
Carlos Driscoll, the study's lead author and a doctoral student at
the University of Oxford.

Today's Near Eastern wildcat, which lives in the remote deserts of
Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, probably
looks similar to its ancestor, Driscoll says.

It has the same shape as a feral cat, shares its shy, reclusive
behaviour and has a taste for birds and mice, he says.

The research started as a conservation project in the UK. It drew
the interest of the National Cancer Institute because domestic cats
are a model for genetic diseases, says Driscoll.