Merged Cats are Classy Drinkers (NYT Article)

[Percent]

<snip> cats, which were doing fine catching vermin on their own.

Yeah! And slurping them up...

 

[Jim_MDP]

To the cat haters...

Cats are just as aware of our emotions, expressions and gestures...

...they just don't care.

 

[Halfcentaur]

Well, dogs have also been bred to understand the signals, expressions, etc of humans for a very long time as opposed to cats, which were doing fine catching vermin on their own.

Yeah, which is why I said dogs have had more time.

( I am no cat hater either, I've had cats my whole life. I find it interesting how cat lovers find it easy to write off cats as just as capable at understanding the world of humans as dogs are, blaming it on apathy. I have a friend who despised dogs as stupid animals that are slaves to obedience, and claims it's the intelligence of cats that makes them so aloof. I really don't like it when people do that. )


What is strange to me is that, using the fossil record, modern dogs seem to only have evolved about 10-15 thousand years ago. But in this episode of NOVA, new genetic evidence is suggesting something more akin to 100,000 years. If this is true, we may owe our success as a species a lot more to dogs than we think. I love animals who live in symbiotic relationships.