It has often been said that the dog was the first animal domesticated by humans. The date of this has long been placed at 14,000 to 20,000 years before present. Recent analysis of mitochondrial DNA of dogs, wolves, and other canines show that dogs had actually split off from wolves 135,000 years ago. I purpose that not only have paleontologists been mistaken about the date of the domestication of dogs, dogs were not even the first animals to be domesticated. This place of honor belongs to the ancestors of the common house cat, Felis catus.

Not only was the cat the first to be domesticated, it was done so over 4 million years ago, long before the genus Homo evolved. And in fact it was the cat, or rather the loss of cats, that molded and shaped the evolution of Homo.

(If "domestication" doesn't sit well with you when applied to the relationship between a prehuman primate and a cat, think of it as a quasi-symbiotic relationship.)

There are many unexplained matters in the early history of hominines. How could the australopithecines survive in Pliocene Africa? No tools for hunting, too small and weak to complete with other scavengers, teeth (in the gracile form) unadapted for plant eating, they seem to have been unable to even feed themselves. And the slow and small australopithecines would have been easy prey the first large carnivore to come along. Where did they spend the night? In spite of these drawbacks, australopithecines managed to survive almost unchanged for 2 million years. How? And why did these survivors suddenly evolve into a new species, Homo, just then the large carnivores were dying out? The answer to all these questions: the Pliocene Pussy Cat.

There are five sections to the Pliocene Pussy Cat Theory (PPCT). Subsistence, defense, shelter, extinction and evolution. But first some background.

Background:

Modern domestic cats are descendants of the African wild cat, a species which hominines have always co-existed with. Compare this with the dog. Modern dogs are descendants of the European Gray Wolf, a species that early hominines had no contact with. This by itself means that it is more likely that cats were domesticated first.

There are several cases of modern apes adopting cats as pets. One classic example that we will examine later is Koko the gorilla. Cases of apes adopting any other species are far rarer. The recent case in Osaka, Japan of a wild macaque monkey stealing a kitten shows that this is not limited to captive primates.

Stray cats are far more likely to move into a human's home, and by doing so becoming self domesticated, then any other species.

Cats, unlike any other domestic animal, will hunt on its own and then bring its prey back to its home and drop it in its master’s lap.

Few feline fossils have been found at australopithecine living sites. However, sick cats tend to go off and die by themselves. Any fossils found would be mistaken for wild cats. Even today, it is near impossible to tell a domestic cat's skeleton from that of an African Wild Cat.

We do know that cats and primates were in close association in the past as cats are known to have acquired a primate virogene some 5 to 10 million years ago.

Copyright © Lorenzo L. Love
August 8, 1998