Thread by @ellle_em, So do you want to know the REAL difference between cats and [...]

So do you want to know the REAL difference between cats and dogs???

Besides, of course, the physical and biological and evolutionary differences which I mean duh but like, the difference between both as far as humans are concerned????

I'm gonna tell you

Humans selectively bred dogs to do work for us

Humans eventually started selectively breeding cats but initially, cats selectively bred themselves based on their ability to be cool with humans

There you go. That's it. That's the whole thing

Sigh ok want more?

Humans learned if we bred dogs for certain features and behaviors we could train them to do stuff for us. Herd sheep. Protect settlements. Help us hunt. Kill vermin. Pull carts/loads. We figured out we could kinda shape dogs into tools

We learned that because wild dog-type animals hunted cooperatively, it was possible to make them do other things cooperatively, since they were already keyed for it. It took a while! But we figured out how to use that cooperative nature to make dogs into various tools

And because dog phenotypes are so elastic (I am not a scientist so these might not be the correct science words here) we could make dogs look REALLY DIFFERENT.

We could breed massive molossers to go to war with us and small hairy terriers to kill moles in our gardens

We could make lithe sighthounds to run down and kill game for us; we could make bulky, fluffy sled dogs to survive the most intense cold. We could do all these neat things with dogs and make them really well-equipped for a bunch of different tasks

We could refine them! So we have dogs who can point at birds in one way and dogs who point at different birds in a totally different way! We could make dogs who herd cattle/sheep in one style & others who drive cattle/sheep in totally different styles

So basically we made dogs into a sort of technology. It became important for human survival to know how to use and refine dogs.

This means that even today, when we don't use dogs as tools the way we used to, dogs are still endowed with different instincts to do things

Terriers are still keyed to dig and kill things
Labs are still keyed to pick things up and bring them to you
Collies are still keyed to herd
Dobermans are still keyed to guard
etc etc etc.

Dogs still see themselves as do-ers of tasks. It's in their DNA

So of course your dog loves you! But your dog is also the product of millennia of refinement and the WAY it loves you is determined by what it was bred to do. A German Shepherd will want to obey you. A sighthound will....not want to obey you

A lab will want to work closely beside you. A Great Pyrenees will want to do its own thing b/c it was bred to work independently. Even mixed-breed dogs carry these various traits hardwired into them. Your dog will view you through the lens of what it was bred to do

AND YES OF COURSE THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS PLEASE DON'T FILL MY MENTIONS WITH HOW YOUR SALUKI WON ALL THE OBEDIENCE AWARDS WHILE YOUR GERMAN SHEPHERD GOT IN WITH A BAD CROWD AND GOT BUSTED FOR DEALING I GET THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS

Ok! So onto cats!

See cats looked at the rise of human settlements as an opportunity to hunt all the nasty vermin that found our harvests delicious. What would become the domestic cat was an opportunist

Humans made excess food! And trash! And that attracted rats and mice and birds! And cats ate those things!

So cats started chilling around the edges of our settlements and then something amazing happened

Some soon-to-be-domestic-cats were less afraid of humans than others. They could tolerate being closer to us. And the closer they were to us, the closer they were to our hordes of vermin. They ate more, lived longer, had more babies

And whatever genetic feature allowed them to be less afraid of humans was passed down to those babies, who repeated the cycle

THIS IS A GROSS SIMPLIFICATION OF A COMPLEX PROCESS

Anyway, humans noticed these weird little pointy creatures that ate vermin and said "hm these are kinda cool, we can keep these around" but they never really though "huh we could make them herd rats" or anything like that. Humans let cats do their own breeding

Humans didn't consider it necessary to selectively breed cats for work because cats were already good at the one thing they did.

Humans kind of accidentally selectively bred cats for FRIENDLINESS

Yup. Cats were kind of inadvertently selectively bred for being nice

Cats! Those things so many people believe are incapable of love, were actually selectively bred based on their ability to like us!

Friendly cats were brought inside, fed better, cared for better, lived longer, had more babies. And the babies who were friendly were brought inside, fed, cared for, lived, had their own babies.

We were breeding companions.

And while we were doing that cats were figuring stuff out on their own. They began to appreciate us as care-givers BUT they needed to develop social behaviors--both b/c they were living closer to others of their kind & closer to us. So from solitary hunters they became communal

They figured out we responded to baby sounds and so kept making those baby sounds (this retention of juvenile traits is called neoteny and lots of domestic animals do it!). They used tails/ears/eyes/scents to communicate with each other. They developed social structures

In fact the entire domestication process among cats was going from the INDEPENDENT LONER we assume they still are to the social, communal, companions they ACTUALLY ARE

Again, I am simplifying the process here because I'm not a scientist and this is complex and Twitter isn't the best place for sharing complexity.

Anyway we eventually figured out we could breed for appearance in cats--hence Sphynxes and Persians and all that

But it was never about utility. We didn't breed sphynxes because they could hunt mice in hot places or something. We just saw a natural mutation and decided it was cute. Because humanity I guess.

SO IN CONCLUSION

The difference between cats and dogs is we bred dogs to be tools and cats bred themselves to be companions.

Both love us!
But cats? Cats didn't really HAVE to. They could've been like raccoons or whatever, remained on the fringes, eating our trash. Instead some of them

were friendly enough that they came into our homes and we aided that selective breeding for companionship until bam--cats.

Dogs we honed, refined, developed into tools.
Cats were like "eh these weird food beasts are pretty cool, we'll chill with 'em"

And that's the difference between dogs and cats

Anyway help me help cats: https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1309999500992405504?s=20

https://twitter.com/ellle_em/status/1309999500992405504?s=20

Ok I want to add something!

I am aware dogs were domesticated much, much earlier than cats. Dogs were domesticated when humans were still migratory hunter-gatherers. Cats weren't domesticated until humans became settled cultivators

But I don't believe this necessarily changes the essential differences: cats were not selectively bred for utilitarian purposes the way dogs or horses were.

and it's not like human beings haven't considered using small, non-canine predators to hunt with. Ferrets and genets, for example, were both utilized as sport hunters.

Never cats

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