![]() ![]() If regional indigenous groups of these animals could be distinguished from one another on the basis of their DNA, and if the DNA of domestic cats more closely resembled that of one of the wildcat populations, then he would have clear evidence for where domestication began. Because wildcats typically defend a single territory for life, he expected that the genetic composition of wildcat groups would vary across their geographical ranges but remain stable over time, as is observed in many other felid species. In 2000 one of us (Driscoll) set out to tackle the question by assembling DNA samples from some 979 wildcats and domestic cats in southern Africa, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and the Middle East. Confounding the issue was the fact that members of these wildcat groups are hard to tell apart from one another and from feral domesticated cats with so-called mackerel- tabby coats because all of them have the same pelage pattern of curved stripes and they interbreed freely with one another, further blurring population boundaries. Indeed, as an alternative to the Egyptian origins hypothesis, some researchers had even proposed that cat domestication occurred in a number of different locations, with each domestication spawning a different breed. In addition, that species is represented by populations living throughout the Old World-from Scotland to South Africa and from Spain to Mongolia-and until recently scientists had no way of determining unequivocally which of these wildcat populations gave rise to the tamer, domestic kind. Although a number of investigators suspected that all varieties descend from just one cat species- Felis silvestris, the wildcat-they could not be certain. The question of where domestic cats first arose has been challenging to resolve for several reasons. ![]()
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