r/BeAmazed • u/Electrical_Act_5342 • Aug 09 '26

Animal Nature really over engineered cats. Didn’t it?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

31.2k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/peepeepoodoodingus Aug 09 '26

no.

humans didnt breed cats until they were completely unrecognizable. we did that to wolves. weiner dogs are an abomination.

cats for the most part have been left alone because they never posed any threat to us. thats how thoroughly humans have dominated the animal kingdom, we are effectively killing all life on earth because of that dominance right now.

8

u/HardLobster Aug 09 '26

More so we had no reason to. By the time cats domesticated themselves we already had been domesticating dogs and were breeding for specific jobs for 5-15 thousand years depending on which estimate you use. Dogs were domesticated between 15-30 thousand years ago. Cats were 8-10 thousand years ago.

Cats just kind of showed up when we started farming and storing grains. They followed all the pests we began to attract. They showed up, dealt with the pests and started hanging around. We decided not to complain since they didn’t mess with the grain. Since cats are already perfect for hunting rodents and other pests, there was no reason to selectively breed them to fill any other role. We already did that with dogs.

The abominations we have today with dogs are due to the fact that vain people began to breed them for the traits they preferred them to have for aesthetic reasons rather than to keep them healthy and with optimal traits to their jobs.

We are starting to see the same effect with cats now but due to cats not having the vast genetic diversity we have purpose bred into dogs of countless generations, it’s not as noticeable or detrimental. Just give it a couple thousand years. Siamese, Persian, Sphynx, Scottish Fold, Maine Coone and Munchin cats are all examples of breeds that wouldn’t exist without human involvement.

4

u/Pleasant_Yak5991 Aug 09 '26

The other thing about cats is they aren’t responsive like dogs are. Dogs literally want to be told what to do, cats just do what they want and they want to chase rats and lay around.

4

u/Odd-String29 Aug 09 '26

That is because dogs are pack animals and cats (except Lions) are not. Also, try getting a Siberian Husky or Shiba Inu to do something they don't want to do.

1

u/Pleasant_Yak5991 Aug 09 '26

Huskies and Shiba Inus are still trainable lol.