Evolution "designed" and built both dogs and cats.

Dogs are descended from wolfs and retain most of their wild instincts, although 10,000 years of domestication have bred some of the instincts down. Wolfs are PACK hunters. They can solo hunt but do rather poorly solo. For the pack to be successful in the hunt they must all be able to anticipate what the other members of the pack will do. The individual member has to subordinate his own needs at the moment for the needs of the pack. This produces an animal with a strong need for acceptance by the pack and very predictable responses. We call them dogs.

Cats are descended from,...well... from cats. We do have some variation in the domestic breeds but most cats are not breed specific. Cats in the wild, with the exception of the African lion, are SOLITARY hunters. This requires an animal that is emotionally self-contained, very adaptable because it has to make kills under many different conditions by itself, and a heavily armed, ferocious fighter because it has to overpower the victim by itself. To be most successful the animal must be able to form hunting teams and social structures when beneficial. Even in the wild, cats have sometimes been observed hunting as teams. To produce that kind of adaptability evolution had to build a highly intelligent animal with great variation from one to another. So although the cat is aloof it has the ability to form emotional bonds. That gives a strange creature with many apparently conflicting qualities, even within the same individual, and strong differences from one to the other. We call them cats.

Copyright © Wayne D. Cowey
June 10, 1998