There's more than a little housecat in that example, I think (though there's more housecat in tiger behavior and body language than you'd expect). I stumbled across this one while looking up Pekingese dogs a few days ago and it reminded me of Roseholme Cottage's resident felines.
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The two cats that own our house are convinced they are leopards, living on the Serengeti.
(though there's more housecat in tiger behavior and body language than you'd expect).
Other way round. There's more tiger in housecat behavior and kinesics than most people would think.
Among the Mammalia, there is no more perfect predator than a cat. Any size.
Tigers can be as sociable as housecats -- at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center near Terre Haute, most of their tigers (etc.) started out as house pets (!) but outgrew the role -- which doesn't stop most of them from smoothing on the fences and making a greeting cough at visitors.
Alas, they've grown too big to play with, and have a little too much difficulty getting too rough at playtime. (Plus, it turns out people are made out of meat, which is something of a quandry for an adult tiger.) But they're still inclined to interact with people in a very housecatlike way and several even seem a little lonely.
They seem much more socially there than the other big cats.
They seem much more socially there than the other big cats.
They are. Lions are the only truly social cat species, but tigers, feral housecats, and cheetahs are all facultatively social- they can form small groups (up to large colonies for feral cats) in the wild, based along either families or just buddies, depending on the density of the local food supply and the personalities of the individuals involved.
Cheetahs are so genetically bottlenecked in part because they so- they have a much narrower range of things they feel comfortable preying on than tigers, all smaller than humans, and their friendly nature makes them easy to tame compared to a lot of other large carnivores. However, they have very finicky breeding behavior, that usually won't happen in captivity- therefore every Rilly Cool housepet some noble or royal in their territory claimed became a genetic dead end.
Wolfwalker's right, though. For the most part cats are the same standard model tweaked on the scaling and paint job to suit the niche. They're the Toyotas of Carnivora.
LabRat: "Cheetahs are so genetically bottlenecked in part because ... every Rilly Cool housepet some noble or royal in their territory claimed became a genetic dead end."
Interesting. I was under the impression that the genetic bottleneck in cheetahs had been dated to circa 10,000 years ago, substantially before humans started capturing and taming them.
"For the most part cats are the same standard model tweaked on the scaling and paint job to suit the niche. They're the Toyotas of Carnivora."
:-)
Poor cheetahs! If they weren't so shy about hookin' up, they'd be as common as bird dogs and perhaps as friendly.
Wolfwalker- the original bottlenecking event does date that far back, but it's estimated that the drain from human capture had a pretty significant impact on how fast they could otherwise recover from it.
Roberta: wouldn't surprise me. They have a lot of characteristics that would make them good domesticates... except they won't mate without many miles of running room to get acquainted in.
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