Cats are one of the largest number of pets in the world, second only to dogs. According to Winn non-profit feline foundation, there are about 600 million cats in the world. The reason why cats can be widely accepted by people all over the world has a vital role-the ability to kill rats.
Cats are definitely the bane of mice. I remember when I was a child, mice were rampant at home. My mother brought back a cat from grandma's house. On the third night, the cat caught six or seven big mice. From then on, there were no more mice in the house.
Of course, although the cat has successfully entered the human interior by virtue of its rodent control ability, today's possession still depends on its face value. After all, cats have already seen their faces and eaten, even if they are shocked to see mice, they will be favored as long as they are good-looking. But, you know what? Cats are not native species in most countries and regions in the world, but alien invasive species. What's going on here? Let's get to know each other.
How did the cat come from?
The cat we often say is the domestic cat. Although there are hundreds of domestic cats now, these domestic cats are just different varieties. After all, it is still a domestic cat. It is only the differences in human choices that make them so different.
As we all know, domestic animals are domesticated from wild animals, and domestic cats are no exception. Although China is home to many wild animals, such as pigs, dogs, chickens and ducks. The initial domestication of cats was not in China.
From the current archaeological and genetic analysis, domestic cats were successfully domesticated in the fertile crescent zone (referring to a series of fertile land in the history of West Asia and North Africa on the east and west sides of the two river basins, which looks like a crescent moon on the map, hence the name). About 10000-9500 years ago, the ancestor of domestic cats was African wildcats.
African wildcats, also known as Asian and African wildcats, are small cats, mainly distributed in Africa, West Asia and Central Asia. China also has the natural distribution of Asian and African wildcats, but it is mainly concentrated in parts of northwest China.
The ancestor of domestic cats-Asian and African wildcats
At present, the mainstream view is that the domestication of Asian and African wildcats first comes from their self-domestication, because the time when Asian and African wildcats were domesticated happened to be the period when human beings had relatively stable and diverse agricultural farming. Due to the stable agricultural cultivation, human beings began to have "grain storage", which made many mice originally living in the wild gradually gather in human settlements.
When humans find these mice that are nocturnal, destructive and reproductive, there is nothing they can do. At this time, some Asian and African wildcats followed their main prey, mice, without hostility to people. This is the self-domestication of domestic cats.
After that, humans began to establish contact with cats with leftover meat, and domestic cats were successfully domesticated. Although domestic cats were domesticated a long time ago, they have been in a semi-free state (it is convenient to catch mice), so domestic cats have been the wildest domestic animals for a long time, and their hunting ability and habits are closest to their wild ancestors, especially the older cats like civet cats, which still retain strong wildness.
How did the domestic cat come to China?
After the domestic cat was domesticated for the first time in Crescent Land, it was obviously impossible for it to reach China from the Near East, so the role of human beings appeared at this time. According to the skeletal evidence found so far, the earliest domestication of cats in China occurred about 5,300 years ago. Archaeologists found eight bones of two "cats" at the Neolithic site in Hu Quan village, China.
However, this cat is not another cat, because the "cat bone" found by analysis and comparison does not belong to a real cat, but to Shi Hu. Shi Hu, also known as the leopard cat, is a subordinate animal of the feline leopard cat, whose stripes are similar to those of leopards, and was also called the "money cat" in ancient times.
Real cats appeared in China about 1200- 1000 years ago, and were found on the Silk Road, which proved that people tried to bring domestic cats from the Near East back to China through the trade of the Silk Road at that time. However, the time when domestic cats actually appeared in China has not been an accurate conclusion.
In other words, China's domestic cats were brought from the Near East by the ancients through the Silk Road, and the main reason for this is that the ancients saw the terrible rodent control ability of domestic cats. After all, China has been a big agricultural country since ancient times, and the rodent damage is more serious.
From rodent control experts to the world's 100 invasive alien species?
For a long time, cats have been a good helper for human beings to kill rats. However, the origin of domestic cats determines its status as an alien species in many countries and regions. However, domestic cats have always been kept in captivity, so they have never been regarded as invasive species.
Until some domestic cats completely divorced from human beings and became stray cats, they either ran away from home for their own reasons or were abandoned. Because it has always been semi-free-range, some stray cats can always survive successfully even if they have no owners.
Because stray cats are carnivores, the wildness is reactivated after the survival of the fittest, and they can hunt by themselves. Moreover, these stray cats not only prey on mice, but also other small mammals and wild birds.
As early as 20 13, the United States published a survey result, showing that stray cats and stray cats living in the United States kill 1300-4 billion birds and 6.3-22.3 billion small mammals (including squirrels, mice and rabbits) every year.
After that, the British authorities also conducted an investigation, and found that stray cats killed more than 654.38 billion wild animals every day in Britain, including about 27 million wild birds. In Australia, where species are extremely rampant, stray cats have caused the extinction of about 20 small mammals in Australia.
Although there is little research on stray cats in China, it is conservatively estimated that there are at least 2 million stray cats living in cities and towns in China. According to the cat's food intake, at least 654.38 billion wild animals were killed in a year, and among these threatened animals, birds bear the brunt.
At this point, cats have changed from a good helper to an invasive species, posing a great threat to small mammals and birds in many countries. Of course, in this process, there is nothing wrong with cats themselves, because it is human beings who need to change them from wild animals to domestic animals, and also because domestic cats are needed all over the world. It is also human beings who abandoned chaos and forced them to return to the wild environment. In order to survive, they began to slaughter some native species, thus becoming invasive species.
Therefore, in order to solve the problem of stray cats and dogs, we must first start from the source, raise the threshold of raising, such as registration, increase the difficulty of abandoning pets, reduce the number of newly added stray cats from the root, and then adopt and sterilize them in the area, so as to gradually change the identity of cats again.
What companies are there in Beijing FFC Building?