Study confirms longstanding suspicion: domesticated cats have smaller brains than their wild ancestors

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Study confirms longstanding suspicion: domesticated cats have smaller brains than their wild ancestors
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According to a new study, domesticated cats have smaller brains than their wild cat ancestors, confirming older studies and opening up new insights into how domestication affects animals.

, sought to replicate older research from the 60s and 70s on brain size in cats to see if those findings would still be accurate if assessed with today’s knowledge.

To try and avoid the pitfalls of previous researchers, this study looked at skulls of modern-day domesticated cats compared to the North African wildcat, a species known to be their direct ancestor, as well as the skulls of hybrid cats that resulted from domestic cats mating with European wildcats. When we talk about cats and domestication, some refer to cats as only semi-domesticated due to the fact that it was seen as a benefit to cats to ally with humans at the very start of the domestication process because of the human proximity to food such as rats.

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