People in China lived alongside ‘chicken-killing tigers’ long before domestic cats arrived
Humans lived alongside leopard cats in ancient China’s colonies more than 3,500 years before the arrival of domestic cats, new research shows.
The findings reveal that people in the region had an enduring and complex relationship with these animals for thousands of years before domestic cats arrived from traders along the Silk Road 1,400 years ago.
The work was published Thursday, November 27 in the journal Cellular genomics.
Modern domestic cats (Felis catus), which are descendant of African wild cats (Felis Lybica), have adapted so well to life with humans that they are now found on every continent except Antarctica.
Yet when and where they were originally domesticated is uncertain, with researchers previously suggesting the Levant 9,500 years ago and Egypt around 3,500 years ago. One of the main hypotheses is that they spread to Europe with Neolithic farmers around 2,500 years ago then were eventually taken along the Silk Road across Eurasia to China.
However, in 2013, evidence of cats living alongside humans in western China thousands of years earlier, around 3300 BC., appeared, casting doubt on this idea.
In 2022, analysis of cat DNA revealed that these ancient cats from China were not domestic cats. but they were leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensis), a small wild cat native to South, Southeast, and East Asia.
Rather than clarifying everything, the result raised other questions: how long leopard cats had lived alongside humans, when and how domestic cats reached China, and what drama unfolded when domestic cats arrived and discovered they weren’t the only felines in town.
To learn more, the researchers behind the new study used radiocarbon dating and DNA sequencing of nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from samples of 22 ancient felid bones, discovered at 14 archaeological sites across China, dating from around 3,500 BC to 1,800 AD. The scientists then compared their results with previously published genomes of ancient and modern cats from around the world.
Of the 22 individuals, 14, dated between approximately 730 and 1800, were domestic cats. The first domestic cat was discovered in the town of Tongwan, a key crossroads along the Silk Road in western China. Previous research has identified another domestic cat further west along the Silk Road in Kazakhstan, dated between AD 775 and 940.
The earliest known depictions of domestic cats in China are painted designs in two tombs in central China dating from around 820 and 830 AD. There is also a written account from around the same time of the empress presenting a pet cat to her ministers.
These documents suggest that domestic cats arrived in China via the Silk Road relatively recently, around 700 AD, and were considered exotic pets and likely kept among China’s ancient elite, Luo told Live Science. The cats were often white, which was considered a sacred color among animals, she explained.
All previous remains belonged to leopard cats, dating from around 5,400 years ago to around 150 AD.
When researchers studied cats, they realized that the close relationship between humans and leopard cats was not a passing, occasional thing but rather a shared history spanning more than 3,500 years, Luo said.
She added that leopard cats in ancient China may have once occupied a similar niche to domestic cats, entering into a commensal relationship with humans by preying on small rodents in villages and fields.
“I think in ancient times, people kept the cub and tried to breed it so they could catch rodents. I don’t think it was ever fully domesticated, but it was certainly a more intimate relationship than with today’s leopard cat,” Luo said.
Eva-Maria Geiglpaleogeneticist at the Jacques Monod Institute of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) who was not involved in the study, told Live Science that the results reflect the process of domestication of cats around the Mediterranean. “It’s a commensal relationship, taking advantage of the human niche and that was very well received by Neolithic farmers because they really had to contend with rodents and venomous animals,” she told Live Science. “These cats were not domesticated in the sense that we see it today – these couch potatoes – they were still true wild cats.”
Records compiled between the fifth and third centuries BC in China provide further evidence of this relationship, Luo said, indicating that people welcomed wild cats onto their farms to control parasites. That means leopard cats may have had a relationship with humans that lasted about 3,500 years, she said.
However, this relationship eventually ended and there is a gap of almost 600 years between the last discovered leopard cats and the first appearance of domestic cats in China.
Luo said this lack of cats coincides with the period of division (AD 220 to 589) after the collapse of the Han dynasty and before the rise of the Tang dynasty. It was a time of war and colder, drier conditions, with declining agricultural yields, social unrest, and a shrinking population. A similar one a temporary population decline was observed in black rats (Rattus rattus) in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.
This means leopard cats have likely lost their hunting grounds, Luo said. When the Tang Dynasty was established in 618 AD and agriculture and human population rebounded, leopard cats were no longer as welcome, due to the rise of chicken farming.
Leopard cats still have a bad reputation for killing chickens, she said, and so they would have become unwanted animals. In southern China, the leopard cat is nicknamed the “chicken-killing tiger,” Luo said.
Domestic cats took their place because they are cute, tame and usually catch smaller prey like mice and rats, not chickens, Luo suggested.
Geigl said the crucial change that led to domestic cats becoming widely accepted probably occurred in Egypt in the first millennium BC, when people kept cats in temples and fed many cats together, and a genetic mutation led to a change in behavior. “This is not normal behavior for a cat. A cat is a solitary and territorial animal, the complete opposite of what the Egyptians had,” she stressed.
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