Scientists Confirm Cats Domesticated Humans

No, not really. Humans, after all, aren't entirely domesticated yet and cats, as it turns out, domesticated themselves. That's the thinking, anyway, as reported today in the Washington Post. The short version here, according to researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the University of Oxford, is that a particular species of wildcats (Felis sylvestris) started populating the outskirts of the Near East's Fertile Crescent when large scale grain agriculture and grain storage began attracting a large rodent population some 12,000 years ago.

Our old friend natural selection gave an adaptive advantage to the feral wildcats who dared the occasional human contact, as humans recognized the symbiotic advantages of the cats in rodent control. These cats thus became the ancestors of all domestic cats today worldwide. Had wild cats been domesticated by humans as was the case with other animals, it supposedly would have been much more likely that, e.g., China's and Europe's different wildcat species would show up at the trunk of the family tree. Not so, however, leading to the single-species self-domesticating thesis.

[BROKEN LINK - LOLCat Picture]

This explains much about our longstanding relationship with cats. Remaining mysteries include where and why they are getting cameras and computers for all those annoying posters on the internet and why, if they're smart enough to do all that, they haven't learned yet how to use the spell checker.

UPDATE: LOLCat idea thanks to Stevo Darkly. (See comments.)