New cat family tree revealed
Modern cats have their roots in Asia 11 million years ago, according to a DNA study of wild and domestic cats.
The ancient ancestors of the 37 species alive today migrated across the globe, eventually settling in all continents except Antarctica, say scientists.
Eight major lineages emerged, including lions, ocelots and domestic cats.
The moggy is most closely related to the African and European wild cat and the Chinese desert cat, an international team reports in Science.
Warren Johnson of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, US, led the study.
He said they were able to trace the ancestry of all living cat species back to South East Asia some 11 million years ago.
In a relatively small number of migrations, cats spread across the world, as land bridges sprang up between continents.
It turns out that the domestic cat is most closely related to the wild cats of Africa, Europe and China.
"You can take a look at your cat, that you share so much of your life with, and imagine that in the relatively recent evolutionary past, it was connected and related to species such as the European wild cat," Dr Johnson told the BBC News website.
"We now have a much better idea of where the domestic cat fits in with all of the 36 wild species and what ecological and geographical events led to the development of each one of these species," he added.
"Through that we have a much better understanding of what makes a domestic cat a cat and what evolutionary event distinguished the domestic cat from its ancestor and what it retains today."
The Near Eastern Origin of Cat Domestication
Carlos A. Driscoll 1*, Marilyn Menotti-Raymond 2, Alfred L. Roca 3, Karsten Hupe 4, Warren E. Johnson 2, Eli Geffen 5, Eric Harley 6, Miguel Delibes 7, Dominique Pontier 8, Andrew C. Kitchener 9, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi 10, Stephen J. O'Brien 2*, David Macdonald 10*
1 Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD 21702, USA; Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
2 Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD 21702, USA.
3 Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, SAIC-Frederick Inc., NCI-Frederick, Frederick, MD 21702, USA.
4 Jagd Einrichtungs B�ro, Am Sahlbach 9a, 37170 F�rstenhagen, Germany.
5 Department of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
6 Division of Chemical Pathology, University of Cape Town, Observatory 7925, Cape Town, South Africa.
7 Department of Applied Biology, Estaci�n Biol�gica de Do�ana, CSIC, Avda Maria Luisa s/n Pabell�n del Per�, 41013 Sevilla, Spain.
8 UMR-CNRS 5558 Biom�trie et Biologie Evolutive, Universit� Claude Bernard Lyon I, 43 boulevard du 11 novembre 1918, 69622 Villeurbanne, France.
9 Department of Geology and Zoology, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh EH1 1JF, Scotland, UK.
10 Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Carlos A. Driscoll , E-mail:
Stephen J. O'Brien , E-mail:
David Macdonald , E-mail:
The world's domestic cats carry patterns of sequence variation in their genome that reflect a history of domestication and breed development. A genetic assessment of 979 domestic cats and their wild progenitors (Felis silvestris silvestris - European wildcat; F. s. lybica - Near Eastern wildcat; F. s. ornata - Central Asian wildcat; F. s. cafra - sub Saharan African wildcat; and F. s. bieti - Chinese desert cat) indicated that each wild group represents a distinctive subspecies of Felis silvestris. Further analysis revealed that cats were domesticated in the Near East, likely coincident with agricultural village development in the Fertile Crescent. Domestic cats derive from at least five founders from across this region, whose descendents were subsequently transported across the world by human assistance.
