Source: The Paper
The cat you're petting may have originated in Africa.
Cats are one of the most common and popular pets in people's lives. Where did the Chinese cat originate? Doubts remain.
Previous studies of domestic cats also lacked coverage of East Asia.
In addition, the taxonomic status of one of the least known cats and the only endemic species in China among the world's cats, the desert cat on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, has long been controversial. Is it a separate species? Or a subspecies of a wildcat?
Felis silvestris bieti, an endemic cat taxa of the Tibetan Plateau, Figure Song Dazhao/CFCA
The surging news learned that in the early morning of June 24, Beijing time, Luo Shujin's research group and collaborators from the School of Life Sciences of Peking University, the State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, and the Peking University-Tsinghua Joint Center for Life Sciences published the latest paper in the international academic journal Science Advances online, unveiling the mystery of the above problems.
In this study, 27 desert cats, 4 Asian wild cats and 239 domestic cats were collected from the blood, tissue, hair, feces or museum specimens of 27 desert cats, especially the domestic cat-desert cat co-region distribution area, and the mitochondrial and Y chromosome polytopic sequencing and the whole genome of 51 of them were sequenced.
The researchers found that although the native Chinese wild cat did not participate in the domestication of chinese cats, there was a recent and extensive genetic penetration between desert cats and domestic cats in the same domain.
This hidden history and current situation of genetic communication means that whether the domestic cat population on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has a hybrid genetic impact on the wild cats distributed in the same region is an urgent concern; this provides an important scientific basis for the protection of rare and endangered wild cats such as desert cats and Asian wild cats.
The study shows that native Chinese domestic cats have the same genetic background as the world's domestic cat population, meaning that East Asian domestic cats can also be traced back to African wildcats in the Near East or North Africa, thus supporting the single-origin hypothesis of domestic cat domestication in the world.
The domestic cat Tu He Bing, which originated from the domestication of African wildcats and spread to East Asia, has recently been widely infiltrated by the genes of desert cats with the same geographical distribution
Genetic and archaeological evidence also suggests that domestic cats were domesticated from African wildcats about 10,000 years ago, occurred in the Near East or North Africa, and subsequently spread around the world.
The desert cat and the Asian wildcat, European wildcat and other wild cat subspecies between the genetic evolution distance is comparable, and the Asian wildcat in history there is a close genetic exchange, according to the principle of taxonomy, the desert cat should be classified as one of the subspecies of wildcat, the scientific name is set as Felis silvestris bieti.
This is the conclusion of the researchers based on a combination of phylogenetics, population genetic structure, gene exchange, and population dynamic history.
Original title: "Latest Research: China's Unique Desert Cat Should Be Classified as WildCat, Which Is Widely Affecting Local Domestic Cats"