Way back in this thread I proposed that collecting friendly strays and neutering them as pets, while leaving the less friendly ones out there to breed, would cause cats to evolve into less friendly animals not well suited for being pets, though the argument didn’t seem persuasive at the time:
Here, the author of "Cat Sense, British anthrozoologist John Bradshaw, seems to agree: "However, Bradshaw worries that current trends in cat breeding could lead to grumpier cats: Statistics from the Humane Society of the United States indicate that 88 percent of pet cats are spayed or neutered, compared with just 39 percent of free-roaming cats. As a result, free-roaming cats — which include feral cats and strays — produce about 80 percent of the kittens born each year. House cats tend to be selected for their docility and friendliness to humans, but they’re quickly taken out of the gene pool. Meanwhile, feral and stray cats rely on their killer instincts and wariness of humans to survive and breed. Evolutionary pressures could tip the balance toward the less socialized, wilder side of the feline species. “The longer that continues, the more likely it is that the cat’s average temperament will become less amenable. We’re pushing domestication back,” Bradshaw said.
This IS a real effect (at least for cats), isn’t it?
I doubt it. I don’t think the selective breeding will be strong enough. Even if many are spayed, plenty of pets and stray housecats contribute to the gene pool of the feral cats. And the lack of friendliness may be partly learned behavior as well.
Cats are a domesticated species; they’re been hardwired over thousands of years to get along with humans. The more wild individuals among a feral population of domesticated animals simply haven’t had a chance for early/consistent socialization which encourages their natural ability to be tame and view humans as not only friendly, but a valuable source of food and affection.
Most feral cats I’ve met do not act like wild or aggressive (grumpy) animals. They haven’t settled in with a human ‘family’ and are often shy with people, or with strange people, but are quite willing to make friends and be touched if you’re patient, especially if you feed them. The spectrum goes from ‘sloppy friendly, acts just like housecat’ to ‘terrified, runs if human comes into eyesight’ and the bell curve leans to the left.
It’s customary for cat rescuers to trap/collect pregnant, unfriendly feral cats or steal their litters if found. I’ve done it myself, I actually stole two litters from the same poor wild cat (she was one who didn’t even like to be within eyesight of a human) in one year, as a teenager. Being handled from an early age usually results in friendly, affectionate kittens perfectly suited to being house pets, even when their parents lived as effectively wild animals.
I do not know it for a fact, but I should have thought that feral cats form only a tiny proportion of the whole breeding population of cats. Surely most cats that are born have been deliberately bred to be sold as pets, and if there is any relevant selection going on there, it will be for friendliness to humans.
We have three cats. Of the three, the one who is most greedy for human scritchin’s is the “free” (free at this point surely topping two thousand dollars over his years on his earth) cat I pulled out from under my ex’s porch.
Even feral cats have a wide range of behavior. I don’t buy it. (And Stokie, while fixed, will far outlive his feral brethren. Imagine the far more common non-bazillion-dollars scenario wherein I just pet him every so often and put some cat food out.)
It’s possible that wariness would evolve, but I wouldn’t think unfriendliness would evolve. It’s not like the neuterers have to convince the cats to jump into their arms, they are trapped in traps.
My understanding is that feral kittens tend to be trapped and adopted out, and can make fine pets but feral cats (that is, cats that have grown to adulthood as ferals) are rarely adopted - as they are too wild.
In short, there is little or no selection. Kittens are either trapped as kittens (and adopted), or they are not, and grow to un-adopted adults (I know some adult ferals can be and are adopted, but my understanding is that this isn’t the norm). The selection is mostly random - those kitens that are noticed by humans and nabbed, get adopted, but it isn’t based on how friendly they are but on their age.
In addition, some places have programs that trap and neuter adult strays.
If the population of ferals were the only source of pet cats and the ones left behind were isolated, this might make sense. But I don’t think most people’s pets are from feral parents, and I don’t think most populations of ferals are all cats from feral parents.
Cats are only very recently domesticated, and through most of that time they have been valued for their wild nature, killing rodents and such. I think it would be a mistake to assume that we have bred out much of that behavior. Feral cats are not a wild version of a housecat. Feral is the cats natural state, skittish and unsocial. Kittens are social until the mother turns them loose on their own and then they lose that social temperament. Cats raised with people are social because they stay in kind of an arrested kitten mode, seeing their owner as their mother.
My point is that feral cats, even if they were an isolated breeding population which they are not, shouldn’t be expected to change too much.
Especially since using a trap to catch a cat would not select for friendliness anyway - possibly for an aversion to the smell of humans, but eventually if a cat gets hungry enough it will enter the trap to eat the bait.*
I was positive you were completely wrong here, but actual numbers are awfully hard to find. This page suggests there are about one-and-a-half times as many pet cats as feral cats in the US. I would have guessed there were many times as many feral as pet cats.
First, feral life is no bed of roses. While the numbers of ferals are constantly being increased by the intake of releases and escapes, the number of cats LEAVING the feral life due to…well, death…is higher for ferals than housecats.
Second, that’s a blurry type of line. There are still a lot of cat owners whose cats roam outside the house, and it can be difficult to differentiate between a beloved housecat on the prowl and an abandoned feral. So not ALL of the ferals you see around are actually ferals.
