Ancient DNA is finally putting hard numbers on a mystery that has trailed humanity for millennia: when our most familiar feline companions first stepped out of Africa and into homes, ships and cities ...

Like your pet cat, lions and tigers have sharp teeth and retractable claws. They sometimes use those fierce claws to knead or make biscuits. They enjoy a nap and a good grooming sesh. That’s not ...

Genetic evidence has revealed that domestic cats originated in North Africa and spread to Europe and East Asia in the past 2000 years, more recently than previously thought. Domestic cats (Felis catus ...

Like a toy on a string, the timing of cat domestication has been a moving target. Now researchers have pounced on a new timeline suggesting that tame descendants of African wildcats left the continent ...

The origins of domestic cats — centuries before they conquered the world’s sofas and internet memes — have long been murky. Now, ancient DNA is helping to fill in the blanks, and the findings shake up ...

A new study overturns previous findings that domestic cats originated thousands of years earlier. An African wildcat (Felis lybica) rests on a rock in Kruger National Park, South Africa. So far, ...

The Afro-Asiatic wildcat (Felis lybica) is the world’s most widely distributed small wildcat, but it’s also one of the least studied. The cat’s conservation status is listed as “of least concern” by ...

3,500 years ago, cats started showing up in Egyptian paintings on tomb walls and in sculptures and carvings. Not only were they abundant in these representations, but it was very clear that they were ...

The house cat (Felis catus) slunk into China in the eighth century. But long before that, the ancient Chinese were by no means catless. Modern house cats are descendants of the African wildcat (Felis ...