[tied] Re: The cat domestication happened more than 100,000 years

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> alexandru_mg3 pisze:
>
> > 1. hen : Is a distinct species ? Yes
> > 2. pig : Is a distinct species ? Yes
> > 3. goat : Is a distinct species ? Yes
> > 4. sheep : Is a distinct species ? Yes
> > 5. duck : Is a distinct species ? Yes
> > 6. dog : Is a distinct species ? Yes
> > 7. cow : Is a distinct species ? Yes
> > 8. cat : Is a distinct species? Yes
>
> Marius, this is not a forum for teaching biology, but mixing up

natural

> clades with arbitrarily defined Linnean "species" is an incredibly

naive

> approach. The 18th century is over. Cats did not become a separate
> species upon domestication for the simple reason that,

biologically,

> they remain a subpopulation of one of the subspecies of the

wildcat,

> still capable of interbreeding with their wild cousins and so,
> technically, conspecific with them. We can LABEL them as _Felis
> domestica_ for convenience, but systematic labels don't change

reality

> (including feline genotypes).
>
> Piotr
>

Piotr, biology is a hobby too, for me (-> to asses my level: I love
genetics, and I know as much as I know the History of Romanian
Language, for example, to quote something that you can appreciate by
your own ).

I mean, I know what I have read:

so I know what difficult is to define a species:

The interbreeding was/is (if you want) an important criteria, but we
arrive to some difficulties when we are trying to operate with it.

'They' are talking now in biology about 'group of related species
that can interbreed' and a species is really defined today only based
on its genetics patterns

But for our discussion this is a detail...

The point here is if domestication triggered or not the apparition of
a new 'species' (and I don't use here a pure biological definition,
not to enter in conplicated discussion) :

the answer is yes, usually the domestication is such an important
change that trigerred the apparition of a new species or of an 'on-
going' new species (I don't know the exact English word to say this)

Marius