Ignoring the much more obvious explanation that they simply buggered off to do their own thing and there was nobody around to bang a plate with a fork.
Re:Cat Gap
by corgiorgy on Saturday December 13, 2025 @09:19PM
(#46260272)
I used to run a Twitter bot called @itsavailable that would mine interesting strings that were not registered .com domains and tweet them out at a regular cadence. One of its sources was the most-visited English-language Wikipedia page titles in the past hour.
One of the only domains I ever bothered purchasing for myself was https://catgap.com
That was my first conclusion, too - the absence of something in the fossil record does not mean that it was not there, just that it did not fossilise.
For one, predators in general often have more gracile build, high power to weight ratio - and don’t fossilise well. They’re also much rarer than herbivores, of course. This means the signal in the fossil record is much weaker and any deviation seems much greater, as you have to turn up the gain to get meaningful data.
Perhaps cats during that period were predominantly dry desert hunters - it is a common niche for felidae - and that environment produces checks wristwatch few fossils.
Perhaps there was another critter extant during that period that just found the crunch of cat bones irresistible, and they all got scavenged.
Perhaps they developed culture and cremated their dead.
Dunno. All that said the E-O was a big transition and it likely did result in gigadeaths, and predators would have been harder hit, ultimately and proportionally.
Re:Cat Gap
by usrusr on Sunday December 14, 2025 @05:58AM
(#46262204)
Similar thoughts crossed my mind as well. But then there's the repopulation with a species that can be traced from Asia. The pre-gap felines just aren't part of the post-gap set. If some were descendants of some endemic low-fossilization branch, chances are they'd be connected across the gap through similarities.
Re:Cat Gap
by verbify on Sunday December 14, 2025 @01:34AM
(#46261206)
I once was thinking that if intelligent machines surpassed human intelligence, the end game would be human intelligence would atrophy but the machines would continue to serve us.
Then I had a humorous thought - what if this already happened, i.e. cats were superintelligent, invented humans to serve them and then they had no need for their own intelligence.
Re:Cat Gap
by gradus_ad on Sunday December 14, 2025 @05:25AM
(#46262093)
It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops, cats will be right there along for the ride, completely ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships seems to be inevitable.
Re:Cat Gap
by gmueckl on Sunday December 14, 2025 @12:39PM
(#46264969)
I would recommend the two episodes "Three Robots" and "Three Robots: Exit Strategies" from the anthology series Love, Death and Robots if you like this kind of humor.
Re:Cat Gap
by marcher on Sunday December 14, 2025 @02:04PM
(#46265771)
In the puzzle game series The Talos Principle, intelligent robots (who were made to outlive humanity after a species-ending global pandemic) seem to have the exact same kind of affinity for caring for cats that humans do. It's actually really sweet and cute.
The domestication of cats happened because of the invention of farming.
If you store grain in a granary, it attracts a lot of insects, rodents, etc. Cats that could tolerate getting close to human settlements found a good food source. And humans like this, because the cats protect the grain without eating it. So you can see why ancient agrarian societies like the Egyptians held cats in high esteem.
And despite only having a few thousand years to adapt to each other, ends up cats and humans can understand each other and form emotional bonds pretty easily.
I imagine we'll see cats on spaceships of the future just like they were the norm on ships in the age of sail.
Basically when the "minds" are benevolent deities all scenarios are possible including this one. We can spend our time with cats, we can even turn into cats...as he writes about "Changers" who genetically alter themselves or shift species at whim.
> The cat gap is a period in the fossil record of approximately 25 million to 18.5 million years ago in which there are few fossils of cats or cat-like species found in North America.
Re:Cat Gap
by Sharlin on Sunday December 14, 2025 @04:34AM
(#46261898)
There are many fascinating things about cats, but one of the things I often think about is how interesting it is that an animal of such solitary nature became domesticated so easily, and how social – and socially intelligent – domestic cats came to be, despite stereotypes. To the point that many housecats, and entire breeds, are called "dog-like" in their demeanor. Female feral cats also form social groups, "colonies", though unfixed males are certainly more territorial. This is evidently an example of neoteny, the retention of juvenile traits in adulthood, seeing that most felids do have a social period while living with their mother and littermates.
Re:Cat Gap
by p_l on Sunday December 14, 2025 @07:35AM
(#46262597)
Cats are actually very social animals, they just don't firm similar pack structures to dogs
With modem technology it became feasible to observe cats without disruption and it showed communal behaviours, including communal care for offspring and IIRC even bringing food to share.
All along the line of somewhat transitionally joined communities instead of more stable groups
Re:Cat Gap
by Sharlin on Sunday December 14, 2025 @12:30PM
(#46264870)
Yes, this is (outdoors, stray, or feral) domestic cats, which is exactly what I mentioned. And as I said, it's largely the females and their juvenile offspring that form colonies – unfixed adult males, while certainly capable of having friendly social encounters on "no cat's lands", definitely don't willingly share their territory with other adult males.
But my point was that their immediate ancestor (and practically still the same species – they easily interbreed) the African wildcat is not similarly gregarious, and neither is almost any other felid, big or small.
Cats have only been domesticated for like ~10k years, so not much in the way of change or adaptation has happened. So wildcats have the same capacity for forming social bands and such, they just don't in the wild as they don't have any incentive to.
Re:Cat Gap
by Sharlin on Sunday December 14, 2025 @03:22PM
(#46266466)
Neoteny is easy to achieve in 10k years. Cf. the Soviet experiments on domesticating foxes, which started showing juvenile, gregarious traits in a few generations of selective breeding. In general felids are social in kittenhood within their family unit, most wild species just "grow out of it" in puberty. Selection pressure (natural or artificial) favoring individuals that tolerate or even enjoy human (or conspecifics') presence favors retention of juvenile traits in adulthood, and this change can happen quite quickly.
Re:Cat Gap
by Sharlin on Sunday December 14, 2025 @12:31PM
(#46264889)
Which is exactly what I said. Feral or stray domestic cats form colonies, because domestic cats are more social than their immediate ancestors. The African wildcat is not particularly social, not in the way domestic cats are. Which is why it's interesting.
Re:Cat Gap
by ursAxZA on Sunday December 14, 2025 @05:32AM
(#46262119)
I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to dream as a cat.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream where my body actually changed shape.
Being loved just for existing seems like a pretty solid evolutionary strategy.
Re:Cat Gap
by the_af on Sunday December 14, 2025 @02:45PM
(#46266127)
> I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to dream as a cat
If you haven't already, read "A Dream of a Thousand Cats", one of the Sandman stories. It was also adapted by Netflix as the last episode of season 1 of The Sandman.
One of the only domains I ever bothered purchasing for myself was https://catgap.com
For one, predators in general often have more gracile build, high power to weight ratio - and don’t fossilise well. They’re also much rarer than herbivores, of course. This means the signal in the fossil record is much weaker and any deviation seems much greater, as you have to turn up the gain to get meaningful data.
Perhaps cats during that period were predominantly dry desert hunters - it is a common niche for felidae - and that environment produces checks wristwatch few fossils.
Perhaps there was another critter extant during that period that just found the crunch of cat bones irresistible, and they all got scavenged.
Perhaps they developed culture and cremated their dead.
Dunno. All that said the E-O was a big transition and it likely did result in gigadeaths, and predators would have been harder hit, ultimately and proportionally.
Then I had a humorous thought - what if this already happened, i.e. cats were superintelligent, invented humans to serve them and then they had no need for their own intelligence.
So, if machines will be decent servants to the cats, will humans get x-ed out of the equation?
https://lovedeathrobots.fandom.com/wiki/Three_Robots#:~:text...
Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to feed and "take care of the cats".
I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and humanform robot.
It's about a cat that lives in a city of robots long after humans are extinct.
If you store grain in a granary, it attracts a lot of insects, rodents, etc. Cats that could tolerate getting close to human settlements found a good food source. And humans like this, because the cats protect the grain without eating it. So you can see why ancient agrarian societies like the Egyptians held cats in high esteem.
And despite only having a few thousand years to adapt to each other, ends up cats and humans can understand each other and form emotional bonds pretty easily.
I imagine we'll see cats on spaceships of the future just like they were the norm on ships in the age of sail.
Basically when the "minds" are benevolent deities all scenarios are possible including this one. We can spend our time with cats, we can even turn into cats...as he writes about "Changers" who genetically alter themselves or shift species at whim.
And as always if someone acts up and violates the Golden Rule they get a slap drone: https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Slap-drone
Duration is clear, start and end not clear
25M - 18.5M years ago.
With modem technology it became feasible to observe cats without disruption and it showed communal behaviours, including communal care for offspring and IIRC even bringing food to share.
All along the line of somewhat transitionally joined communities instead of more stable groups
Cats are very communicative, which suggests they're strongly social, in the broadest sense.
But my point was that their immediate ancestor (and practically still the same species – they easily interbreed) the African wildcat is not similarly gregarious, and neither is almost any other felid, big or small.
Cats have only been domesticated for like ~10k years, so not much in the way of change or adaptation has happened. So wildcats have the same capacity for forming social bands and such, they just don't in the wild as they don't have any incentive to.
If you haven't already, read "A Dream of a Thousand Cats", one of the Sandman stories. It was also adapted by Netflix as the last episode of season 1 of The Sandman.
https://animalfacs.com/catfacs_new