Cats

[Rduke55]

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maybe part of it is that dogs are pack animals and cats are more secretive.

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I thought of this, but don't some felines live in prides? And aren't some wolves solitary? This could be it, but I'd guess intelligence, before packs.

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ALaw is correct. With very few instances, usually due to living near humans and eating all that delicious garbage, the lone wolf doesn't exist . When a wolf gets booted form a pack it needs to find another pack soon or it will starve.
(This human connection is one of the theories about the beginning of dog domestication.)

Also, while lions live in packs and have excellent cooperative hunting, the overwhelming majority of cat species - including the ones ancestral to our domesticated kitties - are solitary or close to it.

[Rduke55]

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Thanks ALaw. Very informative. I thought some lions were in fact capable of a little more sophisticated approach to hunting, but I could be wrong about it. I thought I've seen documentaries that showed how one lion would flush out prey while others laid in wait, etc.

I can't cite exactly where I heard about solitary wolves, but I'm pretty sure some foxes live solitary lives (aren't foxes canines?).

Anyway, what you say makes a lot of sense. Of course, it has to do with dogs respecting the hierarchy of the pack. Although I'm pretty sure male lions wrestle for hiearchy too, I think you're correct that they're more likely to leave the pride and live solitary lives, whereas wolves just accept their demoted status.

Probably this all has to do with intelligence too somehow.

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Foxes are solitary or go in pairs for the most part, but in some regions they form little bands. The are in the Canid family but are a different genus than dogs, jackals, and wolves. Because of this, some people don't consider the foxes true canines. Others split them into groups with the dogs, wolves, etc. called "true dogs" and foxes in their own clade.

Also, why do you think the difference in lion and wolf sociality is related to intelligence?
I think it's pretty unrelated.

[Rduke55]

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I think there was a study done a while back and dogs are more intelligent than cats. Don't anthropomorphize cats and dogs too much, it's not like work dogs get pissed at their boss for making them work all day when what they really want to do is go fishing.

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I think of cats as Lizards with fur.

luckyme

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Kraepelin is offended by your fur-centric stance.

[tolbiny]

Lestat,

Cats were domesticated for different reasons than dogs- (except for a few breeds of ratters) they were used to get rid of rodents primarily. Contrast that with dogs uses- hunting, protecting/herding animals, protecting humans. You don't want a dog to start eating the kill, you need him to wait for the human to divide it first, but you don't care if the cat eats the mouse as long as the mouse is dead your happy. This goes even further with protective roles, it takes a lot of breeding to let a wolf run around with your sheep, but cats don't play this role with people.

[Borodog]

Lots of good stuff here. I would just like to add that I think dogs have experienced much more selective breeding because humans actively work dogs, whereas cats do not actively work with humans (e.g. catching rodents is something the cat does all by itself, without human oversight or communication).

[Borodog]

Rduke,

As always, your freakish bald cat disturbs me.

[ALawPoker]

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Of course, it has to do with dogs respecting the hierarchy of the pack. Although I'm pretty sure male lions wrestle for hiearchy too

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Male lions probably do wrestle for hierarchy. I know intruding male lions wrestle the leader for control of the pride, and if they win they kill the cubs and then make their own (and the defeated male roams).

But then the evolutionary consequence is that lions will be bigger and stronger. Wolves learn to communicate because they need it to hunt, not because they need it for their social structure. It just so happens that with this ability they can determine their hierarchy more efficiently (based on more than just brute ability to wrestle ones own species). Lions just wrestle and that speaks for itself.

I'm not an expert on this stuff or anything, but I like animals and it's fun to talk about them. Good thread. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[brandofo]

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Felines have probably been living alongside of man longer than canines.

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I saw a show on Discovery channel called History of Man or something like that and they said that dogs were the first animal to be tamed by man. They said cats were only tamed originally for religious purposes. (?) One reason they gave was about dogs hunting in packs like humans were doing during that time.

[Arnold Day]

How different (in apperance and behavior) do you guys think the first stages of a domestic dog and cat would be from the pets we are used to today?

[PLOlover]

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I saw a show on Discovery channel called History of Man or something like that and they said that dogs were the first animal to be tamed by man. They said cats were only tamed originally for religious purposes. (?) One reason they gave was about dogs hunting in packs like humans were doing during that time.

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yeah I'm pretty sure dogs were with men as hunter gatherers way before agriculture.