I totally love the energy of the poster in OPs image, it’s so warm and wholesome.
That said, it’s probably true that cats (and dogs for that matter) have a variety of coat patterns because of domestication. Not only do humans choose to breed pets for their coat variations, selecting for tamer, friendlier animals actually also just introduces a variety of differences from their wild counterparts. Coat color is one of them.
But the [related traits from domestication] as a whole, with its diverse array of affected morphological traits, clearly cannot be caused simply by alterations of adrenal function. What, therefore, might be the common factor? What all of these diverse traits, including the adrenals, share is that their development is closely linked to neural crest cells (NCCs). NCCs are the vertebrate-specific class of stem cells that first appear during early embryogenesis at the dorsal edge (“crest”) of the neural tube and then migrate ventrally throughout the body in both the cranium and the trunk, giving rise to the cellular precursors of many cell and tissue types and indirectly promoting the development of others (Carlson 1999; Hall 1999; Gilbert 2003; Trainor 2014).
Edit: the adrenal gland is mentioned here because lessening the function of the “flight or flight” response appears to makes friendlier animals with better temperament for domestication. The idea is that domestic animals were selected for temperament first, and everything else is less important (why would you keep an animal that won’t stop biting you?).
Yeah; I don’t have the spoons to give a supporting link but I remember that being borne out in the fox-domestication experiment, as well (along with other traits that seemed to align with the domestication process – as well –, such as floppy, folded ears); same reason domesticated cattle have developed spots.
I totally love the energy of the poster in OPs image, it’s so warm and wholesome.
That said, it’s probably true that cats (and dogs for that matter) have a variety of coat patterns because of domestication. Not only do humans choose to breed pets for their coat variations, selecting for tamer, friendlier animals actually also just introduces a variety of differences from their wild counterparts. Coat color is one of them.
https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/197/3/795/5935921?login=false
Edit: the adrenal gland is mentioned here because lessening the function of the “flight or flight” response appears to makes friendlier animals with better temperament for domestication. The idea is that domestic animals were selected for temperament first, and everything else is less important (why would you keep an animal that won’t stop biting you?).
Yeah; I don’t have the spoons to give a supporting link but I remember that being borne out in the fox-domestication experiment, as well (along with other traits that seemed to align with the domestication process – as well –, such as floppy, folded ears); same reason domesticated cattle have developed spots.