A few mammals lay eggs, believe it or not (duck-billed platypus); others carry their young around in pouches (marsupials like the kangaroo)
But most of us, including cats, keep our unborn young inside, connected to Mom’s bloodstream through temporary tissue, called a placenta, until they’re ready to meet the world.
Placental mammals are dominant everywhere today except Australia–and it’s all because of the K/T (K/Pg) extinction.
Somehow.
But they are also predators by nature, just like their wild relatives, which include but aren’t limited to lions, tigers, wolves, and bears.
These particular members of the order Carnivora all have claws, fangs, and powerful hunting instincts, but a few others get by without such tools. This is why biologists trying to classify animals look for a set of specialized meat-slicing teeth (called carnassials) that all carnivorans have.
That’s just step #1. The boffins then must file each of the world’s 280-plus carnivoran species (and over 350 fossil groups) into one of Carnivora’s two natural suborders: feliform and caniform.
“Form” here doesn’t refer to the animal’s outward appearance. It involves some dental features as well as certain cranial structures around the ear and skull base that only a zoologist or paleontologist could love.
These anatomical details are all one way in cats and other feliforms and all another way in caniforms, including dogs.
Scientists don’t understand why such a difference exists. But they do know that it has been around for more than 60 million years.
Short answer: No, but Carnivora probably does (its origin story isn’t completely known yet). However, while early small, weasel-like carnivorans already had some feliform/caniform distinctions, they had to play second-fiddle to a group of apex predators called creodonts for tens of millions of years.
Details: Today, Feliformia includes hyenas, oddly enough, as well as civets, meerkats and other mongooses, Asiatic linsangs, and a few other groups in addition to the cat family Felidae.
Caniforms other than dogs include, but aren’t limited to, bears, raccoons, skunks, weasels, foxes, otters, badgers, and (believe it or not) seals and walruses.
Am making good progress on the final draft of “50 Facts About Domestic Cats (And Where They Come From).” This is Fact #14. Thanks for your interest and patience!
He was Swedish but wrote in Latin–a language that scientists still use for what’s now called Linnaean classification. This system includes a genus name like Felis followed by a species name, say, leo for lions.
Down through the centuries, zoologists have broken down that very broad Felis category as they learned more about the various cats and how each group evolved. There are still some controversies, but almost everyone agrees on these genus names:
At the time of writing, there are at least nine other cat groups, depending on which authority you check. The house cat is well settled into Felis and it has four other adorable (but very wild) little companions.
Short answer: Actually, ancient Romans used both words. Perhaps Linnaeus went with “Felis” because another great scholar with a can-do attitude–Pliny the Elder–used it in his late-first-century master work The Natural History.
Details: There will always be mysteries about the house cat. One such puzzle is where cats went right after they left Egypt.
Starting tomorrow, I will be posting at least one fact a day here about house cats, fancy cats, the big cats, all those other wild cats, and/or the awesome sabertoothed cats.
This is in aid of a series of 50 Facts About Cats ebooks that I will self-publish this fall as a retirement project.
By liking or commenting on a post, you can help me decide which facts should go into each book. Or you can just sit back and enjoy some insights into one of the most amazing and popular animal groups on this planet – the cat family Felidae.
IMAGE: Featured image is by Harrison Weir in Our Cats and All About Them, 1889.
Volcano News, Discussions, Chat and more
"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." - Terry Pratchett
Walking alongside Opportunity as she explores Endeavour...
Join Mauricio Antón in his search for clues to restore ancient life
Discoveries, Journeys & Milestones in Space Exploration
Posts mainly about volcanoes
by John Bengtson "the great detective of silent film locations" New York Times
Washington's Landslide Blog
Exploring the Civil War-era landscape in the Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania region.
Our Discovery and Usage of the Chemical Elements
Official Blog of the National Hurricane Center
Silence Is Golden
