Domestication has made cats and dogs more diverse, but also curious – with serious implications for their health and well -being, new research shows.
At first glance, Persian cats and pugs don't seem to have much in common. One is a cat, the other is a dog, separated by 50 million years of evolution.
But when evolutionary biologist Abby Grace Drake and her colleagues scanned 1,810 skull cats, dogs and their wild relatives, they found something strange. Despite their distant history, many cats and dogs show a striking similarity in skull form.
In evolutionary biology, divergence is a common process. In simple terms, divergence is where two organisms that share a common descent becomes different over time, while convergence means that it comes more to each other. While populations of animals split and adapt to various environments, they gradually develop new properties, a process known as a variety of evolution.
This is one of the most important ways in which new species form different properties, so populations develop on individual paths. But sometimes evolution can take a different direction. Convergence takes place when not -related species, formed by comparable prints, evolve independently comparable characteristics.
In the case of domestic cats, dogs and many other domesticated species, deliberate and unintended selection by people seems to have created convergence, accidentally sent different species to similar properties.
Despite a long history of evolutionary separation, breeds with flat face such as the Persian cat and Pugs compare skull structures.
Winter Sonata, a Persian breed, gets combing during the first national cat show of Vietnam in Hanoi (AFP/Getty)
To investigate how far domestication the skull structure has reformed, Drake and its colleagues analyzed 3D scans of skulls of Museum Specimens, Veterinary Schools and Digital Archives. Their data set included domestic cats such as Siamese, Maine Coon and Persian varieties, as well as more than 100 dog breeds of short dogs such as Pugs to Long Meuzzo varieties such as collies.
Their findings showed that domestication has not only increased skull-shaped diversity, further than that of wolves and wildcats, but also led to some cat and dog breeds resembling each other, with convergence to long or flat faces. Wilde Canids (the group of animals that include dogs, wolves, foxes and jackals) tend to share a similar elongated skull, while wild brights (the group of animals that include domestic cats, lions, tigers and jaguars) show more natural variation.
Nevertheless, domestic breeds of both species now cover a more extreme reach on both ends of the scale. This trend can be seen in the rise of cats that have been bred to look like XL Bully Dogs.
Domestication has long shown that when people intervene, even remotely related species can look and sometimes suffer in similar ways.
Cats and dogs are evolving to look more like it (Getty/Istock)
Selective breeding has exaggerated properties between species. Many other changes made by people can push animals that go beyond their bodies by nature. For example, some chickens that are grown for their meat wear 30 percent of their body weight in the chest muscle, which often results in heart and lung problems.
The human preference for pets with a flat face taps in some of our most fundamental instincts. People are hardened to respond to baby functions such as rounded heads, small noses and large, low-set eyes. These features, which are exaggerated in many cat and dog breeds with a flat-face, simulate the appearance of human babies.
Of all species, people are among the most altricial, which means that we are helpless and dependent on care providers to survive, a characteristic that we share with puppies and kittens. Precocial animals, on the other hand, can see, hear, stand and move shortly after birth. Because human babies so seriously trust the care for adults, evolution has shaped us to be sensitive to signals of vulnerability and needs.
These signals, such as the rounded cheeks and broad eyes of babies, are known as social releasers. They activate care -operation behavior in adults, from speaking on higher tones to offering parental care.
Puppies, such as human babies, are born helplessly and depending on their carers to survive (Getty)
Herring gulls (a kind of seagull) are an example of non-human animals. Their chicks instinctively pick up a red spot on the parent's mouth, who gives the adult to set up food. This red spot acts as a social release and ensures that the needs of the chick are met at the right time. In a similar way, domestic animals have effectively hijacked old care mechanisms that have been developed for our own descendants.
These qualities can give pets a benefit in asking for human care and attention, but they will cost for.
The British government committees are an animal welfare committee to give independent expert advice on emerging care of animal welfare. In reports that they produced in 2024, the committee released serious concern about the effect of selective breeding in both cats and dogs.
The reports emphasized that breeding for extreme physical properties, such as flat faces and exaggerated shades, has led to widespread health problems, including breathing difficulties, neurological disorders and birth combinations.
Some cats are bred to look like XL pest heads (PA wire)
The committee argues that animals with severe hereditary health problems should no longer be used for breeding, and requires a harder regulation of breeders. Without these reforms, many popular varieties will continue to suffer from preventing life -limiting disorders.
Selective breeding has shown how easily people can easily bend nature for their preferences, and how quickly millions of years of evolutionary separation can be lifted by a few decades of artificial selection.
When choosing pets that simulate the faces of our own babies, we have, often unconsciously, selected for properties that harm the animals. Insight into the forces that stimulate convergence between species is a memory that we play a powerful and sometimes dangerous role in shaping them.
Grace Carroll is a teacher of animal behavior and well -being at the School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast
This article was originally published by 'The Conversation' and is re -published under a Creative Commons license. Read the Original article
