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Comment by colbyh | Hacker News Reader

> House cats also show none of the typical signs of animal domestication, such as infantilization of facial features, decreased tooth size, and docility.

this is probably false? your average house cat is obviously more docile than an actual wild cat. Devon Rex, Cornish Rex, and Siamese all have exaggerated infantile features (you could argue that all house cats have similar features compared to say, a bobcat). and their teeth are all much smaller across the board.

plus a host of other domesticated animals (chickens, horses) only meet one or two of the above criteria. so if the question is "are cats as domesticated as dogs?" the answer is definitely not. but the article seems to harp on a weird definition of the word "domesticated"

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Curious, but which definition of domestication did you have in mind? I believe the article was talking about the "Commensal pathway" to domestication which results in those features (being more docile, reduced teeth size, etc.).

It's mentioned in the PDF linked in the article [1]. This Wikipedia article [2] also as a bite sized version.

[1] "The Evolution of Animal Domestication" [ (PDF) http://www.palaeobarn.com/sites/domestication.org.uk/files/d... ]

[2] [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_animals#Comme... ]

> Devon Rex, Cornish Rex, and Siamese all have exaggerated infantile features (you could argue that all house cats have similar features compared to say, a bobcat). and their teeth are all much smaller across the board.

Comparison to a bobcat is odd, since domestic cats are most closely related to Felix sylvestris lybica, and Lynx rufus is a completely different genus. Most housecats don't have paeticularly infantile features compared to F. sylvestris lybica, and only very slightly smaller teeth.

Also, I've read that all(?) cats meow as kittens but wild cats lose the habit as they mature whereas domestic cats retain it and that they don't meow to each other but only to humans.

I've heard that too, but then I heard a cheetah meow in a zoo which made me doubt it

The animal was around humans though and might have picked up on the "sounds get me attention" idea.

I never heard it in a zoo though :-)

I think house cats just try to communicate and are smart enough to figure out that sounds work better than body language. I wouldn't be surprised if a wild cat would learn similar behavior if it lived with humans.

Domestic cats raised among humans and feral domestic cats have very different personalities. Feral cats can be quite wild, although we have tamed a few. They are very quiet and very secretive, quite unlike house cats.

One of our cats has learned to make sounds like a crying baby and to occasionally say something that sounds like "mum" - it actually upsets my wife quite a bit even though she knows she is being manipulated.

From what I understand, this is kinda true.

The meowing is learned behavior. We humans tend to like the meowing and not notice much of the body language, so grown cats, who are raised around humans, meow for us. Feral housecats - like the ones living in barns or otherwise have little to no contact with humans - don't tend to meow into adulthood. These are genetically identical to our housecats.

> they don't meow to each other but only to humans

My two cats actually "talk" a lot to each other, inviting to play, checking each other statuses or indicating their discontent if other is disturbing. Older cat was always making some sounds even when he's alone - he vocalizes just about everything - even jumping down from a chair. Another cat was silent when we've adopted him, but learned to "talk" in a few months, from the older one. That's not exactly meowing - but they're making all sort of sounds. While there's usually a human around, they "talk" to each other even when they're alone.

And I heard two wildcats actually meowing loudly, in deep voices at each other, as they were about to fight. Don't think they were forewarning humans to step aside. ;)

Caterwauling is not the same as mewing.

Ah, thanks! I didn't knew that word before. Thought "mewing" is a sort of umbrella term for the sounds cats make. My bad.

Searched for words for cat sounds and found that there are a lot: http://www.catster.com/lifestyle/cat-behavior-sounds-cats-ma... Then, I guess it's right, I only heard cats meow to humans. I think what my cats commonly use are variations of trills and burbles. Not mewing.

Cats make several different vocalizations: in addition to meowing and purring, there are at least caterwauling and chattering.

Caterwauling is definitely used between cats, and chattering is a hunting noise.

> House cats also show none of the typical signs of animal domestication, such as infantilization of facial features, decreased tooth size, and docility.

The definition of a persian cat

House cats are from a species of cat that tolerates humans better than the others.

I'm also of the opinion that if they were any bigger things would change.

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