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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
Warning: if you open that link you'll see a woman using her finger pulling apart a hole on a pussy.
You are technically correct (the best kind of correct.)
Hat tip on both your (new?) domain name and your username.
Thank you for brightening my day with your website. That is one adorable (and adorably annoyed-looking) cat.
Don’t click that link!
The woman is pushing the cat's lip up with her finger. It's not painful to the cat.
?
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.
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.
This is brilliant.
So, if machines will be decent servants to the cats, will humans get x-ed out of the equation?
Maybe the cats were themselves invented by mice?
This is sort of the story of The Time Machine.
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.
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
"We must close the cat gap." - JFK, 1960
Animals could be bred and... slaughtered...
An obvious failure of the Cat Distribution System.
For more cat facts, see CatFACS, cat --help, and man cat.
https://animalfacs.com/catfacs_new
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.
I'm surprised that sampling bias is not in the list. Is it possible that these fossils simply haven't been found yet?
I think the postulation is that the cats would be so abundant, it shouldn't be hard to find their fossils.
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.
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.
have you tried turning the computer off on on?
The cat gap is due to the long time it took for the mutant descendants of Noah's cats to get to America.
Cat gap? Divine intervention. The divinity? Cats.
Welp. Now I'm in a wikipedia hole of how cats came to be.
The universe was created to incorporate cats.
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.
So during what period cats were missing?
Duration is clear, start and end not clear
> 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.
25M - 18.5M years ago.
In my defence, word “ago” was on the other line, so I kind of skipped it.
I’m disappointed this wasn’t about felines