Cats are very similar to tigers in appearance and habits, and are simply a miniature version of tigers, so many people have a question: if cats stay in the wild long enough, can they evolve into tigers in the future?
The premise of this doubt is that all modern cats evolved from the original cat-like insectivorous species, cats and tigers have a common ancestor, and one of their ancestors, such as the slender toothed beast, is a very small animal, only about 20 centimeters long.
In fact, this question is like asking whether monkeys can evolve into adults in the future, there is a group of capuchin monkeys in Serra da Capivara National Park in Brazil, which can simply use stones to process food, and experts have assessed that this group of monkeys is already in the "Stone Age". This incident also adds credibility to "monkeys can evolve into adults in the future".
In fact, most people think that the process of species evolution is simple, although it is very similar, but humans did not evolve from modern primates, and tigers did not evolve from domestic cats.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > a brief history of the evolution of cats</h1>
In modern wild animals, the feline family is definitely a very dazzling presence, occupying almost half of the carnivorous world.
Since the Cambrian species explosion, the earth has experienced several mass extinctions, especially after entering the Holocene, the super-large beasts on the earth have withdrawn from the historical stage, making small and medium-sized predators grow rapidly, and standing at the apex of these animals are the tigers and lions in the cat family.
All modern cats evolved from the cat-like type of ancient carnivorous, and after several differentiations, they finally became what we see now.
At this stage of ancient cats, they gradually differentiated into three branches, namely cats, true saber-toothed tigers, and true cats.
Although many well-known prehistoric beasts appeared in the subsequent evolution of species, neither of them survived the Quaternary Ice Age, and only true cats survived.
True cats continued to diverge several times, eventually forming leopards and cats, which are the predecessors of what we now often call the leopard subfamily and cat subfamily. Tigers belong to the leopard subfamily Leopard genus, and cats belong to the cat subfamily Cat genus.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="19" > full gene return is almost impossible</h1>
The evolution of species is extremely long, the cat family has the same ancestor, but cats and tigers have long evolved in different directions, like a big tree with different branches and leaves, and cats and tigers are like two of them.
If the cat wants to evolve into a tiger in the future, then the first stage it has to go through is to return to the ancestors, just like the tree has to change back into a seed, and then go through the same evolution process again, the first leaf can grow into a B leaf, and the cat can also go through the evolution process of the tiger and eventually become a tiger.
Imagine the possibility? Although we can see partial atavistic phenomena in daily life, such as some people with long monkey-like hair, in the final analysis, this is only a partial regression phenomenon. If a cat wants to evolve into a tiger, it must fully return to its ancestors, especially at the genetic level, which is difficult to achieve in science.
Taking 10,000 steps back, even if you can fully return to your ancestors, it is almost impossible to walk along the process of tiger evolution unchanged, because the evolution process of species is greatly affected by environmental factors, and every slight variable may lead to different results.
Not to mention whether the current earth environment can gradually return to the original state, if it can really return, it is very likely to experience mass extinction again, and whether the cat can survive at that time is still a problem.
The evolution of species, to put it bluntly, is the mutation of genes, and the genetic variation is ever-changing, only one of them has contributed to the current tiger, how can the cat ensure that it can happen to hit the mutation?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="25" > the Earth environment does not allow it</h1>
After the last ice age, the Earth's temperature warmed, glaciers melted and sea levels rose, and large forests rose rapidly, which is the main reason why many large beasts of prey quickly disappeared.
It can be said that the level of prey largely determines the development of predators, and lions and tigers can rise because their size adapts to the predation of the most important ungulates of the time. In most of the current wild environment of the world, large ungulates are relatively rare, accounting for almost all small animals, cats feed on these animals, how to develop a large size?
Since the Industrial Revolution, the rate of disappearance of species on the earth is unprecedented, and the influence of humans on nature has also increased significantly, and now whether people are intentional or unintentional, almost every move affects nature, and in the future evolution of cats, humans will inevitably play a key role.
So my point is that cats stay in the wild long enough to evolve into tigers, but there is this subtle possibility of evolving into tiger-like beasts.