Nearly 10,000 years ago, humans who settled the Fertile Crescent—the region of the Middle East around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—first moved from hunter-gatherers to farmers, developing a close relationship with mouse-eating cats, which lived in ancient times Played the role of pest control. A new University of Missouri study finds that changes in human lifestyles were the catalyst for the first domestication of cats, which migrated with humans around the world. The researchers collected and analyzed DNA from cats in and around the Fertile Crescent, as well as in Europe, Asia and Africa, comparing nearly 200 different genetic markers. The results show that cats, unlike cows or horses, did not experience different domestication events in different regions, and that domestic cats originated in the Fertile Crescent.
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