9781422274958

Only a very few breeds of cat should never have any outdoor time, and many actually relish or even need such activity.

However, evolution was still a long way from finished with its work on these ani- mals. As those early cats spread out across the planet, to exploit new niches as they emerged, the cats continued their develop- ment into new creatures better equipped for survival. Some of nature’s experiments in new adaptations didn’t work out, or the niches for which they had developed disappeared, and these were discarded along the way. We know this action as extinction. The most widely recognized cat species that followed this route into oblivion was the saber-toothed tiger, the last of which was alive as recently as 13,000 years ago. Many more species met with this fate than were able to survive through to today. The ancestors of our domestic cats were among the survivor species. Although they existed at the same time as the saber- toothed tiger and similarly now-departed species, these smaller creatures were somehow better adapted to continue on. The earliest fossils that closely resemble today’s cats have been dated at about 12 million years ago. Actually only three groups of cats of the

The lion and cheetah represent two of the three genera of cats that still exist today: Panthera and Acinonyx, respectively. Our domestic cat represents the third, Felis , or small cats.

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