#秋日生活打卡季#
Nowadays, the relationship between people and small animals has gradually become closer, and in the process of getting along with them, some people may have noticed this phenomenon: those cats look very similar, such as small tigers look like kittens, and some adult tigers and leopards look more similar, but other animals of the family are not like this, such as birds, their appearance and living habits are different. Biologist Anjaly Goswamy responded to this phenomenon, arguing that it was because the evolution of felines was perfect! So is this true?
To figure this out, we first need to understand the evolution of cats. Some experts have found in fossil studies that cats really began to live during the Eocene. During this period, fake cats appeared, of course, fake cats are not literal types, it belongs to the ancestors of felines, especially the two extant subfamilies and the extinct saber-toothed tiger subfamily have a certain relationship with it. However, it then went extinct. In the Oligocene 30,000 years ago, the first cats appeared, and thus the cats we are familiar with began their growth path, which originated from a primitive type similar to hunting cats, which many scientists believe is the beginning of what is now defined as a cat. It used to belong to a subfamily of cats, but now it is mostly a separate hunting cat family.
The status of hunting cats in the cat family is extraordinary, more diverse, their canine teeth are very developed, and some members have also evolved upper canine teeth similar to saber-toothed tigers, which is why most of the tigers and leopards we know now can show heroic posture in predation, because they have suitable "weapons" - sharp teeth. According to this, in the research community, many experts believe that true cats will develop in two directions after birth, one is the gradual extension of the canine teeth, and the other is that the canine teeth tend to become smaller but the body is more flexible.
When biologists study feline fossils, they encounter a difficult problem: they cannot distinguish the classification of cats from these fossils because their fossil morphology is very close. The only difference is in the scale. This brings us to the question we mentioned above, which is why do most felines look so similar?
In this regard, the biological community has proposed a concept of adaptation to radiation, which refers to an animal in order to adapt to different environmental conditions and begin to evolve in different directions, taking the 14 species of ground finches on Galapacos Island as an example, they have changed in the face of the living environment on the basis of their original bodies, and the same is true for cats, they are often very powerful when capturing prey, so in the face of the living environment, there is no need to make much change to dominate the natural world.
In addition, as mentioned above, cats themselves have the same ancestor, so the differences between them will be very small, because their adaptation radiation is not obvious. Therefore, the reason why feline fossils are so similar may be influenced by the evolutionary process. The next time we see cats that look alike, we should be able to understand them better.
So why are only cats in nature that have changed so little in evolution? Evolutionary biologist Anjali Goswamy has given a more scientific explanation for this problem, that is: "The reason why cats have changed less in evolution is because they have found a suitable form and way of survival." That is, while other animals are still unable to adapt to the challenges of their living environment and constantly "upgrade themselves", cats have evolved enough to be able to live comfortably under complex conditions. Of course, in the evolution of these cats, there are also some sword deviations, such as saber-toothed tigers that specialize canine teeth and strengthen throat cuts, but this is small enough for other species!
The biologists' explanation surprised us that cats had evolved so successfully. From this point of view, there is still some room for our understanding of animals.