My sister-in-law and her family recently got a new kitten.
In the middle of discussing just how cute that widdle kitten is, oh she’s so cute, someone wished the kitten could just stay that size forever.
And then my sister-in-law wondered: Why aren’t there any tiny cat breeds? The equivalent of toy dogs. The chihuahua of cats.
My initial thought, which is really just a guess, is that most dog breeds came about because people wanted that breed for a purpose. I don’t get the impression that most cat breeds came about the same way, just given that cats aren’t trainable the way dogs are.
But … I don’t really know. Why aren’t there any miniature cat breeds —by which I mean, a breed where the full-grown cat would be about the size of a normal housecat’s kitten?
Then again, for most miniature dog breeds, the purposes was “Oh, wouldn’t it be cute if this dog were teeny-tiny?”. Like, the original poodle was a hunting dog bed for retrieving game from cold water, but miniature poodles aren’t any good at that (or much of anything else, really).
There is a very real sense in which house cats are already the miniature cat breed.
A Chihuahua weighs about 3-6 pounds, compared to a Great Dane which weighs 120-200 pounds. A house cat weighs 8-20 pounds, compared to a tiger which weighs 220-675 pounds.
Using the average figures, dogs have a 1:35.6 range of weights; the cat family has a 1:32 range.
The can shed, poop on the carpet, and barf in your bed as well as any other breed. And they’re better at ankle biting than are taller dogs like Dobermans.
Flyer, why are you comparing tigers to housecats? They’re not the same species (or even the same genus). The proper comparison is housecat to the African wildcat (Felis sylvestris).
Because if we’re talking about domestic dog breeds, we’re talking about various flavors of genus Canis - Wikipedia
The corresponding thing for domestic cat breeds is genus Felis - Wikipedia
Which doesn’t include anything nearly as large as a tiger of genus Panthera - Wikipedia
The largest *Felis *is Jungle cat - Wikipedia topping out at 30-some lbs = about a twentieth the max weight of a tiger at around 600 lbs.
Admittedly the human-imposed taxonomy of family, genus, and species has some artificiality to it. But it’s not total bunkum.
All dog breeds are not only the same genus, Canis, but the same species, C. lupus. And even, if you attach any weight to the concept of subspecies, the same subspecies, C. lupus familiaris.
That quote sounds… wrong. The whole post seems to have mixed up several genetic concepts. Off the top of my head, copy number variants, genome duplication, frame shift mutations, and variable length repeats are very different things that are all mushed together into a not entirely coherent explanation.
I’ve always heard that the ancestral dog population had particularly diverse genetics, which when selectively bred leads to tremendous phenotypic diversity. IIRC, new mutations have a fairly minor contribution after domestication, and especially after “purebreeds” became more common.
But I’ll have to brush up on canine genetics to give a better explanation. I believe there have been some recent papers that have revealed a lot about the modern and ancestral genomes of dogs.
Why are there toys breeds? That’s an interesting question … as we know, hygiene wasn’t exactly great in Europe not so long ago … and it was discovered that fleas greatly prefer dogs over humans … the typical nobility wouldn’t want fleas themselves so they bred a toy sized dog to keep on their person and keep the fleas off of themselves … they’d all jump on the lil’ dog …
Elegant solution?
Dogs have been selectively bred for usefulness since perhaps before antiquity … whereas cats were already useful and so they didn’t need to have certain traits selected for. My understanding was that the whole concept of cat breeds came about during the Victorian Era, industrialization brought about the wealth and luxury needed to pursue a hobby that was entirely cosmetic.
House cats are really good at what they do for humans, always have been … take an apartment building severely infested with mice and rats … rent all the units to Crazy Cat Ladies … and in very short order the building will be free of such vermin … as long as you don’t mind your own bed being infested with these Crazy Cat Ladies …
What about giant cat breeds? The ancestors of dogs were not Great Dane or Mastiff sized. If there’s a question about toy cat breeds, there is the corresponding question about large cat breeds.
I think in general, dogs are a special case. For one thing they’ve been domesticated for far longer than any other animal. And for another, you don’t have toy cattle breeds or giant chickens either. So probably it’s better to ask not “why don’t we have toy/giant cat/cow/pet snake breeds?” but “why are dogs so incredibly varied in size?”
Actually miniature poodles don’t shed. That, along with being very smart, is one of the biggest selling points for poodles. The advantage of miniature breeds over their larger cousins are obvious if you have small living quarters.
I sometimes think Maine Coon is the “part Cherokee” of the cat world. Everybody except the purebred purists wants to claim some MC ancestry for their mongrel cat.
