Feline Genealogy: Prowling Past in Purrsuit of Pussy Paternity

When Daddy digs into my computer time with his genealogy activities, my feelings about this are easily taken care of with a simple bribe.

What can I say?

I love belly rubs, so sue me! ;-D

But Daddy can't hog the Computer forever!

So what is this thing called Genealogy?

For all you Cats who don't know I did some research!

According to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary this is the definition:

1. An Account of the descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or from older forms.

2. Regular descent of a person, family, or group of organisms from a progenitor or older form.

3. An account of the origin and historical developement of something.

According to The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories "Genealogy" has "Middle English" origins: "This came via Old French and late Latin, from the Greek word "Genealogia", from genea 'race, generation' and -logia 'speaking, discourse'.

This all got me to thinking...Cats...that means me, you dear reader, the stray in the alley down the street...we are all organisms.

A "Something" that developed over centuries, from a much, much earlier "Something".

So I went Googling!

I did a search for "Cat Genealogy", and came up with some interesting stuff. ;-D

1. To give you a sense of how all this Begatting stuff works, when it comes to keeping track of sibblings, parents, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, Grandparents, and Great-Grandparents, here's a post from Midlifeblues, in 2008, that details the, um, family making activities of the family felines: Cat Genealogy.

2. In 1999 a Feline Genealogy Test was perfected that will help your human, help you, learn more about your roots.

It has something to do with your human putting you on their lap facing them, then folding your ears down so they lay flat on your head, then bending down, rubbing your nose with his or hers, and saying in a squeaky voice `oooo... you look part Lab to me..', Then sticking their tongue out and panting like a dog at you.

I know, I know...what the hell?

Don't ask me!

Here is what your reaction to all this is supposed to say about your Genealogy.

Apparently I'm part Lab. ;-D

Actually, there's really something to this Genealogy stuff when it comes to us Felines. ;-D

3. There’s was apparently an article in a Northern California newspaper, in 2005, that was about people who were working to track down the origins of the humble house cat using the same DNA techniques that genealogists use in tracing human ancestry, similar to what Daddy did with his Uncle last year.

Too bad that the full article is lost to us now, but here is an excerpt as posted by Random Genealogy:

Cat fossils are few and far between, so feline genealogy has always been a bit of a mystery.

The scientists could track feline emigrations because of a train of mutations that accumulate in certain regions of DNA over time. Cats that went off in one direction have a distinct set of errors from those that traveled in a different direction.

On the basis of these mutations, scientists constructed a family tree of eight different cat lineages. By estimating the mutation rate, they can figure out the time that has elapsed for each lineage.

On Rootsweb there is a List Topic called Genealogy -DNA.

At about the same time as the above someone posted an excerpt from an article in Science Magazine  that adds more to the story (Also no longer online):

This Week in /Science/

Unraveling the relatively recent speciation events that led to the modern cat family, which includes lions, tigers, clouded leopards, and domestic cats, has been hampered by an incomplete fossil record and a lack of distinguishing skeletal features. *Johnson /et al./* (p. 73) analyze an extensive array of X-chromosome, Y-chromosome, and mitochondrial DNA sequences sampled from all 37 extant cat species to produce a phylogenetic tree that resolves the eight major lineages of cats. Modern cats appear to have originated in Asia 10 million years ago and undertook a series of 10 intercontinental migrations that correlate with major fluctuations in sea level.

The post, and 1 follow-up, are here.

8 Cat Lineages?

10 million years ago?

Way cool! ;-D

4. Research into the origins of Cats is nothing new as this online edition of an 1881 book, by St. George Jackson Mivart, called THE CAT: An Introduction to the Study of Backboned Animals, especially Mammals, shows.

Pawing thru this book proves quite interesting, and there are some cool drawings, too.

 

 

2. In 1999 a Feline Genealogy Test was perfected that will help your human, help you, learn more about your roots.

It has something to do with your human putting you on their lap facing them, then folding your ears down so they lay flat on your head, then bending down, rubbing your nose with his or hers, and saying in a squeaky voice `oooo... you look part Lab to me..', Then sticking their tongue out and panting like a dog at you.

I know, I know...what the hell?

Don't ask me!

Here is what your reaction to all this is supposed to say about your Genealogy.

Apparently I'm part Lab. ;-D

Actually, there's really something to this Genealogy stuff when it comes to us Felines. ;-D

3. There’s was apparently an article in a Northern California newspaper, in 2005, that was about people who were working to track down the origins of the humble house cat using the same DNA techniques that genealogists use in tracing human ancestry, similar to what Daddy did with his Uncle last year.

Too bad that the full article is lost to us now, but here is an excerpt as posted by Random Genealogy:

Cat fossils are few and far between, so feline genealogy has always been a bit of a mystery.

The scientists could track feline emigrations because of a train of mutations that accumulate in certain regions of DNA over time. Cats that went off in one direction have a distinct set of errors from those that traveled in a different direction.

On the basis of these mutations, scientists constructed a family tree of eight different cat lineages. By estimating the mutation rate, they can figure out the time that has elapsed for each lineage.

On Rootsweb there is a List Topic called Genealogy -DNA.

At about the same time as the above someone posted an excerpt from an article in Science Magazine  that adds more to the story (Also no longer online):

This Week in /Science/

Unraveling the relatively recent speciation events that led to the modern cat family, which includes lions, tigers, clouded leopards, and domestic cats, has been hampered by an incomplete fossil record and a lack of distinguishing skeletal features. *Johnson /et al./* (p. 73) analyze an extensive array of X-chromosome, Y-chromosome, and mitochondrial DNA sequences sampled from all 37 extant cat species to produce a phylogenetic tree that resolves the eight major lineages of cats. Modern cats appear to have originated in Asia 10 million years ago and undertook a series of 10 intercontinental migrations that correlate with major fluctuations in sea level.

The post, and 1 follow-up, are here.

8 Cat Lineages?

10 million years ago?

Way cool! ;-D

4. Research into the origins of Cats is nothing new as this online edition of an 1881 book, by St. George Jackson Mivart, called THE CAT: An Introduction to the Study of Backboned Animals, especially Mammals, shows.

Pawing thru this book proves quite interesting, and there are some cool drawings, too.

 

 

Comments

[meowmeowmans]

That was really interesting stuff, Nikita!

Thanks for the really cool genealogy lesson. :)