Two tales of domestication

I mean, this is straight up not true. The closest truly wild house cat is a weirdo that looks like a lanky house cat, and house cat brains are physically smaller and dumber than wild ones. Also need I point out how cats also have their pug versions complete with health issues normal cats don't have?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-taming-of-the-cat/
TL;DR: You're not wrong really, but the comic isn't all that far off either.
- The thing I think is most interesting about cat domestication is that wild cats do not meow and a domesticated cat's meow is at a similar frequency as the cry of a human baby.
The real difference is dogs have had about 30,000 more years of domesticated selective breeding.
- Yeah, they weren't exactly easy to handle from the beginning.
- Actually, current estimates shows us dog domestication happened some time around 30000 years ago while cats were domesticated at the dawn of human civilizations, around 12000 years ago, so less than 20000 years of difference. Also, dogs were domesticated in multiple regions at different times, whereas cats are exclusive to two domestication events. I'm open to evidence of the contrary, of course.
Smartest animal I ever met was my indoor/outdoor cat.
Then again she was brindle and looked like a wild cat.
- You should go to the zoo
- Same, my rescued, fully indoors cat is the smartest non-primate animal I've ever seen. They can clearly understand some sentences, subtle body language, and they're the cutest manipulators you'll ever see, knowing exactly how to get me to stay by their side for "only 5 more minutes".
Do you have a newsletter I can sign up for?

More like:

Dog - "humans are friendly! They give me food! I shall serve them!"
Cat - "humans are friendly! They give me food! They shall serve me!"

I remember a version of this, but the last line was "you/I must be god!"
- Yeah, I've always said that dogs think we're the gods and cats think they're the gods.

They didn't just come inside. They also infected us with brain parasites that makes us like cats, and learnt to meow in specific frequencies that make us treat them like human babies...

They also helped keep grain stores free from vermin that would otherwise have cost countless lives throughout history. Our ancestors knew damn well why they wanted to keep them around.
I don't treat cats like human babies. I like cats way more
- They're that good at it. (Also the toxoplasma help.)
My cat told me not to believe these lies spread by dogs.
Only about 11% of the US population has toxoplasmosis, and healthy people recover without treatment. It's not a life long thing.
Why do I keep seeing people spread this "toxoplasmosis makes you like cats" myth
- Because is funny joke comrade.

Cat domestication is mainly about making them small enough so that when they randomly decide to slap your face with their clawed paws you wouldn't die.

Domestic cats aren't shrunken down big cats, the cats we take into our homes were always this size. They originated from Felis Silvestris Lybica, a species from Egypt and North Africa... Which look fairly similar to just regular cats.
- Then our domestication was becoming larger than cats.
Make sense.

Some people say we didn't domesticate cats, but they cats domesticated us.

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.
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.)
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.

Barn cats are the natural domestication of cats.

You need a friend to protect your grain stores.

Early domestic dogs were probably ratters, too. The domestication process for both were probably pretty similar.

The biggest difference is that domesitc dogs were then also able to be bred into companion hunters.

what really happened was that a caveman saw a wolf and was like aw good boi
- You're alrigh boah

Although, neutering a cat can stop the territorial urination.

May*
Some fuckers just don't care.

My brain just went down a rabbit hole of of breeds vs strays and whether it's fucked or not and how the world would look if people treated cat breeding like they did dog breeding and how things would change.

I had this comment open for like 20 minutes

There are definitely designer cat breeds.
- Yeah, it's just not really common knowledge to the same style. Seems like most house cat videos are Scottish folds
Both cats and dogs are bred a lot and not to the animal's advantage. Though I guess dog breeding and its disadvantages are a little more prominent and known than cat breeding is. Correct me if I'm wrong
- Most people don't care for cat breeds is the thing. The more feral they are, the cuter they look anyway.
- Though I guess dog breeding and its disadvantages
  I mean, the cuter an animal is the more humans want it. Pugs might have health issues, but selective breeding has certainly made them very popular. That is, to the animals advantage.
Cats lack the genetic diversity and flexibility dogs have.
People in the cat fancy have tried to changes things but for the most part a cat is a cat. Probably just part of being an obligate carnivore.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it

They domesticated themselves, I believe.

Gahhhh account sign up blocker
- Put the URL into 12ft.io

This is all nice and cute but how will fox domestication be represented in the future by these types of comic strips?

There's the famous Russian breeding experiment where they were able to breed domestic foxes.
The problem is that they pee every time they get excited. Which would be bad enough if it was a dog, but fox pee smells god awful.
- I believe that study (I could be mistakenly thinking of another study) also showed that their bone density decreases with domestication.
Fox's aren't going to be domesticated.
Foxes dont follow a hierarchical system like dogs, cats or horses where there is an Alpha (the owner of the animal) whom they fall under in the pecking order.
Foxes like to shit and piss all over everything and burrow Into couches. Good luck with the fox thing.
- Nope, none of that is true. None of those animals have Dominance hierarchies.
- That hierarchy thing was proven to be bullshit ages ago
- You might be today's lucky 10,000, but have you heard of the Domesticated Silver Fox?
- They are not going to get domesticated WITH THAT ATTITUDE

No offense to anyone who has a cat, but one of the reasons I have dogs is that they'll probably wait until they get really hungry before they decide to eat your face if you die at home alone.

Does that actually factor in? Or do you just prefer the company of dogs? Seems like a pretty irrational fear if you ask me.
- I wasn't being serious. I just prefer the unconditional love of a dog. Also, I'm allergic to cats.
If you're dead then why does it matter? You aren't using it anymore.
- I would say most people care about how their corpse is disposed of. And 'eaten by cats' would not be my first choice.
Cats don't wait for you to be dead to bite
- Yeah, but you can generally get them off your face before they eat it.

At least they were considerate enough to take their boots off before they came in.

The dog's instincts are still very much intact.