Evil Cats
Habitats
Cats are affecting the whole world.Geneticist Stephen James O'Brien, of the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, remarked on how successful cats have been in evolutionary terms: "Cats are one of evolution's most charismatic creatures. They can live on the highest mountains and in the hottest deserts.They are extremely adaptable and are now present on all continents except Antarctica, and on 118 of the 131 main groups of islands—even on sub-Antarctic islands such as the Kerguelen Islands.
Feral cats can live in forests, grasslands, tundra, coastal areas, agricultural land, scrublands, urban areas, and wetlands.[181] Their habitats even include small oceanic islands with no human inhabitants.[182] Further, the close relatives of domestic cats, the African wildcat(Felis silvestris lybica) and the Arabian sand cat (Felis margarita) both inhabit desert environments,[4] and domestic cats still show similar adaptations and behaviors.[31] The cat's ability to thrive in almost any terrestrial habitat has led to its designation as one of the world's worst invasive species.[183]
As domestic cats are little altered from wildcats, they can readily interbreed. This hybridization poses a danger to the genetic distinctiveness of some wildcat populations, particularly in Scotland and Hungary and possibly also the Iberian Peninsula
Though house cats and wild cats have a lot in common, their genetic differences reveal how the domestication of house cats may have worked. Areas where the domestic cat's genome differs from wild cats are linked to adaptations in fear and memory/reward
conditioning.
The changes in fear conditioning would make house cats more difficult to startle — though this doesn't explain the neurotic tendencies of many domestic house cats. Genetic changes in the memory/reward system would make it easier for house cats to quickly link rewards (like treats) with actions. House cats can, in theory, attribute rewards received to 'good' actions faster than their wild counterparts. During neonatal development, domestic house cats have higher numbers of the progenitor cells that form the cortical areas responsible for processing reward information. This leads to larger cortical areas that are responsible for processing reward information – fine tuning house cats' ability to hone in on what exactly led to the cat treat.
