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This is a new feature, though just an occasional one. When the former Vella posts on cats are done, I’ll do something on feliforms, too.

People wonder about how some other animals might be related to our two favorite pets and their immediate wild relatives.

Are meerkats cats? Are hyenas barking relatives of the dog?

And, are bears and dogs related?

General interest — facts not checked, though bears ARE dangerous (from my reading somewhere, a quote to the effect that the last emotion of quite a few people has been surprise at how fast bears run); also, looking into how cats evolved showed me that the feliform/caniform origin is not that clear-cut.

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Some lagniappe:

Bringing in Caniformia allows me to share a video from last winter that I recently found on YouTube. Watching this raccoon try to catch snowflakes makes me very happy deep down inside.

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Featured image: It’s a dog — a Newfoundland-Grand Pyrenee mix; image by 2-dog-farm, CC BY-SA-NC-ND 2.0.

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