“Cats are treacherous, dogs are loyal”, are cats really heartless?

"It's so nice to pet a cat, it's so nice to pet a cat all the time", I believe many cat lovers and cat owners have this feeling. However, there is also a saying that "cats are treacherous, dogs are loyal", some people think cats are not as loyal as dogs, they leave after eating and forget after eating. Is this true? Are cats really heartless and have no feelings for humans? Today, let's talk to you about cats, this magical animal!

01. Magical Animals – Cats

I believe that many cat owners would think that cats are magical little animals. They are a great source of happiness in contemporary human life and are a must-have pet for winners in life!

When you are woken up by it sitting on your butt in the middle of the night; when the table you have worked hard to clean is overturned by it with one claw; when the paper towel you just changed is messed up by it in an instant; but as long as you look at it, all your anger will disappear in that instant...

So the question is, how were kittens, such magical and cute animals, domesticated?

02. Why were cats domesticated?

One of the earliest known traces of cat domestication was found in Cyprus, dating back about 9,500 years.

There was a cat and some ornaments buried with the tomb owner. We speculate that this is probably related to the Younger Dryas event, but it has nothing to do with fairies, magic wands, and monkey liquor. It is called this name because about 10,000 years ago, the distribution of this herb called "Younger Dryas" changed greatly during that period.

Before this, the earth was warm and pleasant, and even a large area of ​​the North and South Poles melted. However, in just a few decades, the earth's temperature quickly cooled by 7 or 8 degrees, and this freezing lasted for nearly 1,000 years. This is the end of the "Ice Age" we are familiar with. Faced with such a crisis, the superiority of Homo sapiens began to show, and they developed agriculture in a short period of time.

So humans began to grow crops, and at this time, the proliferation of rats and birds became one of the important factors that could affect agricultural production. We can see from the literature on modern agriculture that rats have an important impact on crop production. Going back thousands of years, the losses would have been even more tragic. The same is true for birds. Wherever a flock of birds goes, it can be said that no grain is left.

Based on the principle of mutual benefit, humans began to domesticate cats to catch mice and birds. As a result, both we and cats had more food. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and we should not be too stingy with our friends. When there are no crops, we can also provide cats with certain food to increase their friendship. Over time, human cats were successfully domesticated. After a long tug-of-war, the cats' friendship in the human camp finally reached the maximum level.

03. How do cats please people?

At this point, some people asked, how do cats reach the maximum level of friendliness? Are they born to be so clingy?

First, it takes advantage of the human instinct to sympathize with the young. Although cats are close relatives of tigers, lions, leopards, and other creatures that make humans tremble, cats become small and cute: their chubby faces and soft bodies can very well trigger our instinct to sympathize with the young, and naturally make people addicted.

Here's a fact that may overturn your perception: cats are actually trying to please humans. In order to attract and please humans, cats even undergo many biological changes.

For example, cats have even evolved the skill of slow blinking. In a study by the University of Portsmouth, researchers studied the blinking interaction between owners and cats. When the owner tried to look at the cat with a relaxed smile and blink, the cat would respond with the same behavior, which is not easy for felines.

You have to know that in nature, closing your eyes when facing an animal that is many times larger than you is a very dangerous thing.

Behaviors such as slow blinking are what humans consider to be friendly behaviors, which are not recognized by other animals. However, cats recognize and imitate this behavior, which may be an adaptation of cats and humans in the process of domestication and interaction.

And a study by the Human-Animal Interaction Laboratory at Oregon State University confirmed that, like dogs, cats also have a "secure attachment" to humans.

During the experiment, the researchers first asked the cats and their owners to stay in a new room for two minutes, then separated them for two minutes, and then asked them to stay together for two minutes again. The results showed that cats behaved more peacefully when humans were present, which also proved that cats look aloof, but in fact they are still very dependent on their owners.

This shows that cats have feelings for people, and many people think that cats are aloof, which may be another strategy of cats. After all, cats are also cats, the top of the food chain on earth, so they have to be more reserved, right?