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Cat-fox species?

Anyone could bring European or African wildcats to that island for the purpose of rodent control. Farmers would want that.
 
The Shrike said:
The simple fact that its ancestors *were brought to Corsica by humans* confirms for me that these are/were domesticated cats.
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The crafty ancient wild foxcats conned their way into the boat by standing on each others' shoulders under a big raincoat. The classic Vincent Adultman ploy.
 
TragicMonkey said:
But domesticated cats are even better for that purpose, so why pick wild ones?
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We don't need you around the house we need you out in the fields.

They could have introduced both wild and domestic cats. It also didn't have to be a single introduction.
 
William Parcher said:
We don't need you around the house we need you out in the fields.

They could have introduced both wild and domestic cats. It also didn't have to be a single introduction.
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But the fields are close by human dwellings and full of frequent human traffic. Wild animals will avoid the whole area. Domestic cats weren't all pets and confined to the home, they'd prowl the human-adjacent areas where they were needed. It's the point of domestication in the first place: breed animals which will serve human needs. A mouse in the forest twenty miles away isn't a concern, the mouse in the barn is. A domesticated cat will handle the barn, a wild one won't approach it unless literally starving. Or rabid.
 
My theory/opinion is that this cat-fox is descended from introduced wildcats. Whether these ancient people "made a mistake" or should have not introduced wildcats (for whatever reasons) does not effect my theory. My theory does not even depend on any particular motive for introduction.
 
My theory is that the wild ancestors of the foxcats arrived via an ancient land bridge which subsequently sank, stranding their descendents and enabling them to evolve in isolation.
 
TragicMonkey said:
My theory is that the wild ancestors of the foxcats arrived via an ancient land bridge which subsequently sank, stranding their descendents and enabling them to evolve in isolation.
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I believe that land bridge was clearly Atlantis and the Foxcats are the last remnant of that civilization.
 
It seems that cats and people started hanging out together around the time humans started growing food. Both European and African wildcat genes contributed to what we today consider to be domesticated cats. To my thinking, if humans were traveling with cats and introducing them to new places, then those were tautologically domesticated cats despite whatever genetic markers might have differentiated them from the cats we know today. linky:https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/domesticated-cats-dna-genetics-pets-science/
 
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It may have been "domesticated" in the sense that it was hanging about with humans, and someone took one or two of these cats along for a boat ride to Corsica, but those teeth are not something found on "Felis catus".
 
Meadmaker said:
It may have been "domesticated" in the sense that it was hanging about with humans, and someone took one or two of these cats along for a boat ride to Corsica, but those teeth are not something found on "Felis catus".
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I am unconvinced of that.
A. They don't look that out of the norm to me, though I'm no expert.
B. It could just have been a random mutation of the founding population or even more recently. Seriously, it might just be a change to one gene that controls tooth growth.
The Shrike said:
The simple fact that its ancestors *were brought to Corsica by humans* confirms for me that these are/were domesticated cats.
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How do we know that? Also, could have been brought over shortly after domestication when the two species/subspecies weren't genetically dissimilar enough to distinguish.

From the Live Science article:
When the researchers examined the DNA from that fur, they found these cat-foxes weren't related to any known species around the world, but their DNA was similar to that of the African forest cat (Felis silvestris lybica).
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Can we all agree on how really stupid that sentence is. "...cat-foxes weren't related to any known species around the world............................except this one which is so closely related to these two other species that the may actually just be subspecies."
 
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ahhell said:
From the Live Science article:
Can we all agree on how really stupid that sentence is. "...cat-foxes weren't related to any known species around the world............................except this one which is so closely related to these two other species that the may actually just be subspecies."
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Yeah. I would expect better from a site specifically devoted to science coverage, but apparently not.
 
CORed said:
It's very hard for me to make sense of, or take to seriously, the sentence in the linked article about DNA (not related to any species, but similar to Felis sylvestris lybica). In any case, I suspect these cats are descended from domestic cats, or are a local population of wildcats, likely with some hybridization between the two, which ever may be the predominant ancestor. They may warrant subspecies status, but I highly doubt that they actually represent a different species.
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Reminds me of bad role-play character descriptions.

"Ll3g0l@s stands pensively, yet with an air of calm..."
 
The Shrike said:
The simple fact that its ancestors *were brought to Corsica by humans* confirms for me that these are/were domesticated cats.
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The Mediterranean traders would have been starting around 3000 BC

Corsica would have been one of the trade stops.

It is likely that animals from Africa would have been captured and brought to far away lands for sale. I don't think this equates to 'domesticated' necessarily.
 
My theory would be that Felis lybica a native cat of North Africa, was brought to Corsica via primitive trade routes.
 
The Shrike said:
It seems that cats and people started hanging out together around the time humans started growing food. Both European and African wildcat genes contributed to what we today consider to be domesticated cats. To my thinking, if humans were traveling with cats and introducing them to new places, then those were tautologically domesticated cats despite whatever genetic markers might have differentiated them from the cats we know today. linky:https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/domesticated-cats-dna-genetics-pets-science/
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I tend to agree with this. Very likely, the ancestors of the corsican "fox cats" were brought there long enough ago that they were genetically closer to their wild ancestors than modern domestic cats, but they were already living with humans and therefore were "domestic" cats. They may have been brought there for sale, or they may have simply been ship cats that escaped.

The thing is, there really isn't a place where you can draw a line and say, these were wild cats, and these were domestic cats, other than that, if they lived with humans, they are domestic cats. When humans started storing grain, the grain attracted mice and rats, which attracted cats, which, over time adapted to living with humans, and also crossbred with native wildcats as they were brought to other areas (at least in Europe), so over time, domestic cats have diverged from wildcats.

ETA: Whether you consider African widlcats, European wildcats and domestic cats all one species or three species pretty much comes down to whether you are a "lumper" or a "splitter". They are closely enough related to crossbreed, but they are more or less separate populations, so it's hard to say how much gene exchange there really is among them.
 
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CORed said:
ETA: Whether you consider African widlcats, European wildcats and domestic cats all one species or three species pretty much comes down to whether you are a "lumper" or a "splitter".
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I'm decidedly biased toward lumper. Modern hyper-splitting species concepts have subsumed the population as a level of biological complexity.

This has led to such silly discussions as the folks oohing and aaahhing over the complicated situation of Nelson's and Sharp-tailed Sparrows co-occurring in salt marshes on Atlantic Coast of New England and the Maritimes. Evidently, we now know that there is quite a bit of hybridization – including multiple types of backcrosses – between these very similar species. I'm like, "Yeah, no clue, Sherlock. That's because they're the same damn species."

Ditto Corsican "cat-foxes". They're cats, bruh. It's a cool population of cats if they've got some unique pelage and/or dentition. But they're . . . cats.
 
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