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Here kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, and kitty


dinneR

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5 minutes ago, donkpow said:

Six cats in that clan. I had no idea.

The lions seem to be a family of five cubs plus a mama. Five kittens in one litter is “very rare,” said Wyoming Game & Fish Public Information Specialist Mark Gocke, though not totally unheard of. If nothing else, it’s a “neat occurrence.”

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"Mountain lions are quiet, solitary and elusive, and typically avoid people by nature." -wildlife.ca.gov

Since they don't form packs, I guess it's a mother, two older cubs that haven't split-off yet and three young cubs.

Have you seen the current excellent "Nature" episode on PBS?  It's about cats.  Genetic tests show that ALL housecats, from Siamese to the common housecat, evolved from the African Wildcat (Felis lybica), pretty small as far as cats go but a little larger than today's common housecats who still strongly resemble it.  The African Wildcat is also a solitary animal but housecats that become feral do form packs.

The genetic mutations suggest we've had housecats for 10,000 years. The oldest housecat was found in a 9,500 year-old grave, buried with a human, on the island of Cyprus.

Note that 10,000 years ago is around the time farming became serious around the Fertile Crescent stretching from modern Iraq/Iran to Egypt. Farming and storing harvests attracted rats and mice and they attracted wildcats who apparently got in the habit of looking for rodents around farms and did the farmers a favor catching the rodents.  It is an educated guess from archeological finds that farmers left food out to attract the wildcats even more and that eventually some of those wildcats, who had grown accustomed to being close to humans, became tamed.  And that's how we probably got housecats!

The African Wildcat:

Image result for african wildcat

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