… everybody’s German Shepherd is 3/4’s wolf …
Just yesterday I had a neighbor swear up-and-down one of my cats was a Maine Coon … now this cat is a little smaller than average and all I could say was “he’s just a mutt” …
Was this cat a girl? Maine Coon females are smaller; on the small side, they’re almost petite. But a male MC can get YUGE. My son’s cat Chompers’ mom was a smallish pure Maine Coon; his father was some anonymous tabby. Chompers is humongous, as are his brothers; his sisters are all petite. They look like Maine Coons to varying degrees. Chompers’ fur doesn’t look very MC-like; he looks like a MC dressed up as brown-and-black shorthair tabby.
Hm, I had a female Maine coon cat, and she was a big cat.
My most favorite MC feature of hers was her very long, very fluffy tail. When she was about 16 she got cancer on the end of her tail and had a couple of inches amputated, and it was STILL a long tail.
But no one would ever have called her “almost petite.” Granted a lot of her apparent big size was hair.
I’ve been poking around Wikipedia and came up with a large Maine Coon is the size of a small bobcat … interesting that the small side of both for the females is about 8 pounds … the cat size my vet calls “very well taken care of” …
One of the distinctions of the Maine Coon as a specific cat breed is it’s large size, and it looks like they come in something of a variety of markings … and loooooooong … up to four foot … so if you find yourself with 16 pounds of feline muscle and fitness purring your lap up … you’ve got a Maine Coon …
That’s awesome, but not exactly what I was going for. Dogs can be anywhere from 2.5 ounces to 250 pounds. There’s nothing like that wide range in the cat world, or any other species for that matter. Dogs really seem to be a special case.
Which dog breed is 2.5 ounces?
I guess I was wrong. I saw a show that purported to show the largest and smallest dogs in the world. The bull mastiff was close to 250 lbs, and I swear the teacup chihuahua was under a quarter pound.
But this website claims the smallest dog weighs 1.4lbs, which is still a pretty huge range. But I was wrong. Must have misremembered that show.
http://www.petvr.com/index.php/pages/BooBooWorldsSmallestDog.html
Correct. Dogs are the special case.
Well that’s the what is different within the species Canis … the why it is for them and not for Felis is really just that domestic dogs have been subjected to much more controlled selective breeding than have cats (for various characteristics including size and attributes related to various functions they serve, as working breeds or as novelty items), in particular over the last several hundreds years. Cats utilitarian function was mouser and the typical housecat size works well for that. Cats have comparitively not been selectively bred to any significant degree because there has been no sustained large market for cats with selective features.
Pretty much only dogs have been under such prolonged artificial selection pressure to fill so many different niches as part of human societies.
Great post.
My Pit/GSD cross encountered a Teacup Chihuahua puppy once, which I swear was the size of a hamster, and even though it was a warm day, couldn’t stop shaking. My dog kept sniffing around like she was thinking “I smell a dog, but I don’t see a dog.”
Well, not that special; ants of the same species vary far more wildly in size within a colony. All the more impressive that they’re all sisters.
Did you mean this movie? I just watched it a couple weeks ago. You are right; it’s very good, and also suitable for somewhat younger viewers because it contains no on-screen violence or profanity.
Anyone remember the story a couple years ago about the male Westie that mated with a female Rottweiler?
Until I read this story, I didn’t know that the mother rejected her puppies. 
Trancephalic, caste-based size polymorphism within social insects that are members of the meta-organism of the colony/hive is indeed interesting, but “far more wildly” it aint. Size polymorphism in ants within the colony is typically something like 5 mm for minors to 8 mm for majors with a few species having slightly wider ranges. Red driver ants seem to be the outlier with a fourfold size differential (1.5 to 9 mm). The range of size within the species Canis is larger.
A comedian I saw years ago had a bit in his routine about tiny dogs. He wrapped up with the statement, “If I can yell loud enough to kill it, it’s NOT A DOG!”
Nope, different documentary, purely about housecats and their history.
Horses, also, have a wide human-bred variance. Draft horses vs. miniature horses are a pretty big size difference.
Just looked it up. Miniature horses 86 to 97 cm tall at the withers and Clydesdales 163 to 183 cm. Yes, while nowhere near as big of a spread as within domestic dogs a pretty big difference. Visualizing them I am surprised the spread is not more.
If anyone is interested here is an article about the genetics of height in domestic horse breeds.
For a little more perspective on horses, I did a little digging.
The American Association of Miniature Horses states that minis should be no more than 34" at the base of the mane when grown. AMHA.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have draft horses. The tallest recorded was a Shire, at 7’2" at the shoulder. The minimum height for draft horses is 6’ at the shoulder. TBH, 6’ is not an uncommon height for any number of horse breeds, including those used for dressage, racing and dressage, so I tend to think that heights over 6’ are closer to accurate for draft horses.
Modern ranges for recognized breeds are then something like: 34" to 6 feet. Not too much different from what DSeid turned up. I think part of what isn’t captured in that is the overall physiology. A mini is dainty and a draft horse is decidedly NOT.
Another species that now has a lot of difference in size is pigs. Consider the teacup pig, darling of, well, someone, and the HOG. That’s a range of a something that weighs under 10 pounds when grown to animals that can weight a 1000 pounds or more.
There is in fact no breed of “teacup pig”. The closest may be the Yucatan Miniature Pig bred for laboratory use and they average 83 kg full grown, not under 10 pounds.
The main applied breeding pressure was to select for domestic pigs that grew faster and bigger than their wild stock origins.
“You said dressage twice.”
"I *like dressage!"
With apologies to Mel Brooks.
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- For those who don’t get the joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96DQspxu0jg
Well, someone thinks there are teacup pigs. Mainly teacup pig breeders. Weights are: 12lbs and up. They are animals bred to be pets. cite
:smack: whoops. Yeah, I ride dressage. I meant to list racing, jumping and dressage (you could add stock work, police work and a number of other things). Oh well. One track mind.