How Cats Used Humans to Conquer the World
Short history of the long history of feline socio-biology. Interesting. The earliest known cats were from Egypt and Turkey. My cat likes turkey.
Excerpts:
This DNA exchange went both directions along the trade routes, too. That led to what, at first, seemed like baffling results in the ancient DNA. For example, a 2,000-year-old cat in Egypt had DNA sequences typical of wildcats in India. Claudio Ottoni, another member of the research team now at the University of Oslo, remembers thinking it was a mistake when he first got the sequences back on his laptop. In fact, that cat was found in an ancient Roman port city called Berenike, which was directly connected to trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Humans brought cats onto ships to catch mice and, in the process, spread cats all around the world.
Not all of the remains yielded DNA. The Middle East environment is hot. In Egyptian tombs, where the cat mummies came from, it was also humid. “This is really a disaster for DNA,” says Geigl. The very act of extracting DNA can damage it, too. So to protect the DNA from heat released when bones and teeth are ground, the grinding process happens in a liquid nitrogen bath. Ultimately, the team was able to get DNA from 209 of the cats.
Fun stuff.
Short history of the long history of feline socio-biology. Interesting. The earliest known cats were from Egypt and Turkey. My cat likes turkey.
Excerpts:
This DNA exchange went both directions along the trade routes, too. That led to what, at first, seemed like baffling results in the ancient DNA. For example, a 2,000-year-old cat in Egypt had DNA sequences typical of wildcats in India. Claudio Ottoni, another member of the research team now at the University of Oslo, remembers thinking it was a mistake when he first got the sequences back on his laptop. In fact, that cat was found in an ancient Roman port city called Berenike, which was directly connected to trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Humans brought cats onto ships to catch mice and, in the process, spread cats all around the world.
Not all of the remains yielded DNA. The Middle East environment is hot. In Egyptian tombs, where the cat mummies came from, it was also humid. “This is really a disaster for DNA,” says Geigl. The very act of extracting DNA can damage it, too. So to protect the DNA from heat released when bones and teeth are ground, the grinding process happens in a liquid nitrogen bath. Ultimately, the team was able to get DNA from 209 of the cats.
Fun stuff.
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