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tptacek

If dogs started out as wolves and ended up as English bulldogs, imagine how stupid raccoons will eventually look.

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One of my favorite memes: https://share.google/sQw5gZ6O4wQspS61P

Thank you for this, I needed that.

Most cat breeds still look more or less like their wild relatives.

Have you seen short legged cats?

That's a recessive trait that is fatal if they get two copies of it. When left to their devices they'll return to being normal cats in a few generations.

Yes and I'd like it to stop

Most dogs, arguably, too. But there are French bulldogs, dachshunds, and pugs.

Among domestic cats, there are Persian cats and Sphinx cats.

And then you have the fossa.

That's only a pretend cat, it's a lemur-thing really. Wait no, a civet-thing.

Cats aren't really domesticated. Out of many, many cat species we just found one that's well aligned with humans and it spread with humans to the whole world. No other cat species plays well with humans and none shows any signs of domestication.

Citation required for claim that runs counter to most scientific evidence.

Sure thing. That one specific cat species was (and still is) Felis silvestris lybica. All domestic cats come from it and it's still the friendliest towards humans, out of all cat species. They still can and commonly bread with each other when they live in the same area.

Some light reading: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ask-s...

So, what was your evidence again?

Dogs are genetically the same species: Canis familiaris, a type of grey wolf. They can breed with wolves, and other closely related canines.

No dog looks like a wolf unless it was intentionally bred for that look. You can barely tell mixed race domestic cats from their wild ancestor.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. But a counter hypothesis I have is that this might be from the wild population over time getting more interbreeding with escaped domestic cats, causing the apparently domestic behavior in the wild ones.

I think it should be easy to rule out with genetic research and it probably was ruled out since the research shows that domestic cats come from this wild species not yhe other way around, though they interbreed in areas where they have opportunity.

Seems like there's some controversy here, with some research saying that the wildcat is endangered from interbreeding with feral domestics and others saying that its too late.

Probably something like a koala bear

Well this gave me some fun ideas for AI image generation. There goes the rest of my afternoon, thanks!

Luckily there are still the extra snouty breeds like Belgian shepherds and various sighthounds.

And pugs? What would a pug raccoon look like?

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