Toxoplasma gondii, which needs to reproduce in felines, can infect any warm blooded animal. It’s been observed to increase risk taking behaviour which could have helped to contribute to the development of human society.
Well, they certainly helped keep our granaries pest-free.
(Also, when people started killing cats instead of rats it probably had quite negative consequences for civilization… though, to be fair, the black death probably set the right circumstances for the rise of the middle class, and the renaissance… so lose some win some, I suppose.)
I’ve heard the argument for this but I suspect that humans don’t have domesticated traits, its that domestication imbunes animals with human social traits. Which makes sense since the whole point is to make them get along with us.
Some people say we didn’t domesticate cats, but they cats domesticated us.
What if cats are responsible for human civilization by domesticating us?
Toxoplasma gondii, which needs to reproduce in felines, can infect any warm blooded animal. It’s been observed to increase risk taking behaviour which could have helped to contribute to the development of human society.
Well, they certainly helped keep our granaries pest-free.
(Also, when people started killing cats instead of rats it probably had quite negative consequences for civilization… though, to be fair, the black death probably set the right circumstances for the rise of the middle class, and the renaissance… so lose some win some, I suppose.)
They certainly manipulated us. Their cries attempt to mimic that of human babies in tone and frequency so they can get a response from us.
I’ve heard the argument for this but I suspect that humans don’t have domesticated traits, its that domestication imbunes animals with human social traits. Which makes sense since the whole point is to make them get along with us.