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Overview of Domestic Cats (Felis catus)

The domestic cat is a small furry carnivorous mammal that is often kept as an indoor pet. There are over 70 breeds of domestic cat. Cats have strong, flexible bodies with sharp claws and teeth adapted for hunting small prey. They have excellent senses of hearing, sight, and smell that help them as predators. While solitary hunters, cats are social and communicate through vocalizations, pheromones, and body language. Large numbers of feral cats exist worldwide due to uncontrolled breeding and abandoned pets, posing threats to bird populations. Genetic studies indicate domestic cats were first domesticated around 8,000 BC in the Middle East from Near Eastern wildcats.

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7 views2 pages

Overview of Domestic Cats (Felis catus)

The domestic cat is a small furry carnivorous mammal that is often kept as an indoor pet. There are over 70 breeds of domestic cat. Cats have strong, flexible bodies with sharp claws and teeth adapted for hunting small prey. They have excellent senses of hearing, sight, and smell that help them as predators. While solitary hunters, cats are social and communicate through vocalizations, pheromones, and body language. Large numbers of feral cats exist worldwide due to uncontrolled breeding and abandoned pets, posing threats to bird populations. Genetic studies indicate domestic cats were first domesticated around 8,000 BC in the Middle East from Near Eastern wildcats.

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PANNIR Selvan
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Cat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This article is about the cat species that is commonly kept as a pet. For the cat family, see Felidae.
For other uses, see Cat (disambiguation) and Cats (disambiguation).
For technical reasons, "Cat #1" redirects here. For that album, see Cat 1 (album).

Domestic cat[1]

Various types of domestic cat

Conservation status

Domesticated

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Carnivora

Suborder: Feliformia

Family: Felidae
Genus: Felis

Species: F. catus

Binomial name

Felis catus
Linnaeus, 1758[2]

Synonyms

Felis silvestris catus (subjective synonym)[3]


Felis catus domestica (invalid junior synonym)[4]

The domestic cat[1][5] (Latin: Felis catus) is a small, typically furry, carnivorousmammal. They are
often called house cats when kept as indoor pets or simply cats when there is no need to
distinguish them from other felids and felines.[6]Cats are often valued by humans for companionship
and for their ability to hunt vermin. There are more than 70 cat breeds, though different associations
proclaim different numbers according to their standards.
Cats are similar in anatomy to the other felids, with a strong flexible body, quick reflexes, sharp
retractable claws, and teeth adapted to killing small prey. Cat senses fit a crepuscular and
predatory ecological niche. Cats can hear sounds too faint or too high in frequency for human ears,
such as those made by mice and other small animals. They can see in near darkness. Like most
other mammals, cats have poorer color vision and a better sense of smell than humans. Cats,
despite being solitary hunters, are a social species and cat communication includes the use of a
variety of vocalizations (mewing, purring, trilling, hissing, growling, and grunting), as well as cat
pheromones and types of cat-specific body language.[7]
Cats have a high breeding rate.[8] Under controlled breeding, they can be bred and shown
as registered pedigree pets, a hobby known as cat fancy. Failure to control the breeding of pet cats
by neutering, as well as the abandonment of former household pets, has resulted in large numbers
of feral cats worldwide, requiring population control.[9] In certain areas outside cats' native range, this
has contributed, along with habitat destruction and other factors, to the extinction of many bird
species. Cats have been known to extirpate a bird species within specific regions and may have
contributed to the extinction of isolated island populations.[10] Cats are thought to be primarily
responsible for the extinction of 33 species of birds, and the presence of feral and free-ranging cats
makes some otherwise suitable locations unsuitable for attempted species reintroduction.[11]
Since cats were venerated in ancient Egypt, they were commonly believed to have been
domesticated there,[12] but there may have been instances of domestication as early as
the Neolithic from around 9,500 years ago (7,500 BC).[13] A genetic study in 2007[14] concluded that
domestic cats are descended from Near Eastern wildcats, having diverged around 8,000 BC in
the Middle East.[12][15] A 2016 study found that leopard cats were undergoing domestication
independently in China around 5

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