Aye, because without cats, civilization would collapse and humans would die off.
I’m missing something here.
Cats protect us from rats, hamsters, various other rodents and thereby bubonic plague.
duh.
Actually, the subject of why we decided not to eat the little monsters has been studied.
Two main reasons:
- cats aren’t as efficient as other meat animals (in terms of edible meat produced per kilo of feed).
- cats, as carnivores, compete with us in eating the same kinds of food as humans. Cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys all eat largely grass, that humans can’t effectively digest. Even modern attempts to commercially develope more ‘healthful’ meat use similar animals, bison & ostriches.
Domestic cats and their wild precursors don’t compete much with humans, unless you know many people who live largely on rodents and small birds. If anything they are beneficial commensals for human agriculturalists, since they most often prey on pest species. Still doesn’t make them worth eating of course( I’m sure they taste terrible for one thing ). Like you said the energetics of eating carnivores doesn’t really add up.
That is unless you meant cats in the broad sense. In that case, sure, a few species of large cats do/did compete with the human species on the margins. Though in the case of cheetahs they also still had marginal utility as hunting companions for the fabulously wealthy.
One of the James Bond villains ate cats during the Second World War.
Not Goldfinger or Doctor No…
It is neotony – humans like animals with large eyes and big heads because they mimic human baby physicality.