Are you a cat person or a dog person? The answer to this question is said to reveal a lot about your personality and character. One take suggests a dog person enjoys having others depend on them while a cat person takes a more live and let live attitude. The flip side of that argument is that the dog person makes a better partner and caring mate and the cat person’s desire for freedom from attachment makes them less committed and helpful. As with everything in life there’s probably a little bit of truth in both lines of thought it just depends on which side of the debate you’re sitting on.
Dog Domestication
Regardless of which side of the fence you fall, there’s no doubt that cats and dogs are among the most popular pets in the world. They may not agree on the specifics, but experts (scientists, archaeologists, and biologists) agree that humans domesticated dogs first. As hunter gatherers humans and wolves often interacted symbiotically if not cooperatively – basically the wolves would feast on remains left by the human hunters. In Europe this relationship began about 40,000 years ago and slowly evolved until about 15,000 years ago. That marks the oldest instance of dogs buried alongside humans, which is the first archaeological evidence of domestication. Studies of canine DNA support the archaeological findings. For further info Wikipedia is a good place to start.
Cat Domestication?
Cats and humans are a bit murkier. They didn’t begin their relationship until humans progressed from hunter gatherers to agriculturalists. The large stores of grain attracted rats and other vermin, which in turn brought the cats. While we have no proof, it’s easy to speculate that our ancestors appreciated this service and rewarded the cats with food. Anyone who’s ever fed a stray cat knows, that pretty much cements the deal. That suggests the process started around 9,000 years ago. As for when cats became domesticated, well most experts, including quite a few cat owners, lovers, and even cat haters (yes they exist) would argue that process remains incomplete. For more speculation about cat domestication IFL Science has a good article.
Mapping individual cat/dog people is impractical not to mention probably a bit on the creepy side. Instead, our map determines cat/dog countries by the number of cats and dogs kept as pets in each country. I know what you’re thinking the stereotypical cat-lady with two dozen cats should only count as one cat lover. That’s a fair point, but for every cat-lady I’m sure there are several dog owners with their own pack of canines. With that in mind here’s this week’s map (created for the Washington Post with data from Euromonitor)
The map only covers 54 countries, but those countries account for more than 75% of the world’s population. While I never really gave it much thought, I’m a bit surprised how dominant dogs are in both Latin America and China. Did any of these results surprise you? Do you consider yourself a cat person or a dog person?
As always thanks for reading.
Armen