DNA research identifies homeland of the domestic cat

[Al-khiyal]

June 29, 2007 -- The ancestry of the world's household cats can be traced to an ancient region of the near east, suggesting an unusually exotic origin for one of the most aloof animals ever to be domesticated by humans.

A major genetic survey of nearly 1,000 feral and domestic cats has revealed that every breed of household cat alive today originates from just five lineages which lived alongside ancient settlers in the Fertile Crescent, an area stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

The earliest archaeological evidence for cat domestication dates to 9,500 years ago, when cats were thought to have been kept as pets in parts of Cyprus. But the researchers believe domestication started 3,000 years earlier, with the family feline having broken ranks with its wild relatives as long as 130,000 years ago.

Unlike pigs, cows and sheep, which were domesticated for agriculture, and horses and donkeys, which were exploited to pull farming equipment, cats began co-existing beside humans by feeding on mice, rats and other pests that infested the grain stores of the first farmers.

A team of scientists led by David Macdonald at Oxford University's wildlife conservation research unit analysed genetic samples from 979 cats from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and China.

The researchers focused on DNA in the cats' mitochondria, the tiny power-generating structures found in cells that contain their own genetic material and are inherited only down the maternal line.

Searching through the genetic code sequences, the scientists looked for variations at a number of defined "marker" spots. This enabled them to determine which wild and domestic cat lineages were most closely related.

The cats fell into distinct groups, one of which included all domestic cats and the near eastern wildcat, suggesting the two were linked. The other cats fell into four groups including the European wildcat, the central Asian wildcat, the sub-Saharan African wildcat and the Chinese desert cat.

Carlos Driscoll, a scientist on the study, which was published in Science yesterday, said: "What our work shows is that cats were not domesticated anywhere else in the world, but that they became pets for people living in the Fertile Crescent before being carried to other parts of the world by humans." The Fertile Crescent gains its name from land irrigated by the waters of the Nile, Jordan, Tigris and Euphrates, where hunter-gatherers first began to settle. Different civilisations occupied the region, including the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians.

The project, which has taken more than six years, began as an attempt to identify genetic differences between the Scottish wildcat and other native species, but expanded to encompass all species of cat around the globe. The information will help conservationists develop more effective strategies to protect rare species, including the Scottish wildcat.

"These genetic insights offer hope for the wildcat's future," said Professor Macdonald. "In terms of practical conservation our next move is to use this marker to find out how many wildcats are left in Scotland."

DNA research identifies homeland of the domestic cat

[Cheba_Mami]

example of the cats' origins (might not be that accurate but enough information for now):

[Al-khiyal]

June 29, 2007 -- Some 10,000 years ago, an audacious wildcat crept into one of the crude villages of early human settlers, the first to domesticate wheat and barley. There she felt safe from her many predators in the region, like hyenas and larger cats, and the rodents that infested the settlers' homes and granaries were sufficient prey for her.

Seeing she was earning her keep, the settlers tolerated her, and their children greeted her kittens with delight.

At least five females, of the wildcat subspecies known as Felis silvestris lybica, accomplished this delicate transition from forest to village, scientists have concluded, based on new DNA research. And from these five matriarchs, all the world's 600 million house cats are descended.

Carlos Driscoll of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and colleagues spent more than six years collecting species of wildcat from Scotland to Israel. He then analyzed the DNA of the wildcats, of many ordinary house cats and of the fancy cats that breeders started to develop in the 19th century.

Five subspecies of wildcat spread across the Old World. They are known as the European wildcat, the Near Eastern wildcat, the Southern African wildcat, the Central Asian wildcat and the Chinese desert cat. Their patterns of DNA fall into five clusters. The DNA of all house cats and fancy cats falls within the Near Eastern wildcat cluster, making clear that this subspecies is their ancestor, Driscoll and his colleagues report in the latest issue of Science.

The wildcat DNA closest to that of modern house cats came from 15 individuals collected in the remote deserts of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the researchers say.

The house cats in the study fell into five lineages, based on analysis of their mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down solely through the female line. Since the oldest known archaeological site with a cat burial is about 9,500 years old, the geneticists suggest that the founders of the five lineages lived around this time and were the first cats to be domesticated.

By 10,000 years ago, wheat, rye and barley had been domesticated, so it is likely that the granaries of early Neolithic villages harbored mice and rats and that the settlers would have welcomed the cats' help in controlling them.

Unlike other domestic animals, which were tamed by people, cats probably domesticated themselves, perhaps accounting for the haughty independence of their descendants. "The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side," Driscoll said.

Cats are "indicators of human cultural adolescence," he remarked, since they entered human experience as people were making the difficult transition from hunting and gathering to settled communities.

Until recently, the cat was commonly believed to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, where it was a cult animal. But three years ago, a group of French archaeologists led by Jean-Denis Vigne discovered the remains of an 8-month-old cat buried with what was presumably its human owner at a Neolithic site in Cyprus. The Mediterranean island was settled by farmers from Turkey who brought their domesticated animals with them, presumably including cats, because there is no evidence of native wildcats in Cyprus.

The date of the burial, some 9,500 years ago, far precedes Egyptian civilization. Together with the new genetic evidence, it places the domestication of the cat in a different context, the beginnings of agriculture in the Old World and probably in the villages of the Fertile Crescent, the belt of land that stretches up through the countries of the eastern Mediterranean and down through what is now Iraq.

Dr. Stephen O'Brien, an expert on the genetics of the cat family and a co-author of the Science report, described the domestication of the cat as "the beginning of one of the major experiments in biological history," because the number of house cats in the world now exceeds half a billion, while most of the 36 other species of cat, and many wildcats, are now threatened with extinction.

So a valuable outcome of the new study is the discovery of genetic markers in the DNA that distinguish native wildcats from the house cats and feral domestic cats with which they often interbreed. In Britain and other countries, true wildcats may be highly protected by law but stray cats are not.

David Macdonald of Oxford University in England, a co-author of the report, has spent 10 years trying to preserve the Scottish wildcat, of which only 400 or so remain. "We can use some of the genetic markers to talk to conservation agencies like the Scottish Natural Heritage," he said.

DNA traces 5 matriarchs of 600 million domestic cats

[Bent_Bladi]

heck yeah! all the cuties come from the middle east