From Wild Animals to Domestic Pets, an Evolutionary View of Domestication
Submitted on Jun 23, 2009 (Original item from 2009)
Companion Animals | Pet Ownership
by
Artificial selection is the selection of advantageous natural variation for human ends and is the mechanism by which most domestic species evolved. Most domesticates have their origin in one of a few historic centers of domestication as farm animals. Two notable exceptions are cats and dogs. Wolf domestication was initiated late in the Mesolithic when humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers... The first domestic cats had limited utility and initiated their domestication among the earliest agricultural Neolithic settlements in the Near East. [Description excerpted from article]
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