0:02 When we made our video about the canine
0:04 family tree and the accompanying doggone
0:05 gorgeous poster, [music] you all liked
0:08 it a lot. But one comment kept coming up
0:10 over and over and over again. When are
0:12 we going to make a feline one? Well,
0:14 your wish is our command because unlike
0:17 cats, we actually respond to commands.
0:19 Hi, I'm David and this is feline [music]
0:22 earth. This is a feline and so is this
0:24 and so is this and so are all of these
0:27 kitties. Wild felines come in all shapes
0:29 and sizes and live all over the world.
0:31 [music] Plus, there are more than half a
0:33 billion domestic cats. In this video,
0:34 I'm going to take you on a tour of the
0:37 amazing feline family, both wild and
0:39 domestic, and show off the poster we
0:40 made to [music] celebrate them. Okay,
0:42 let's start off with a few of our
0:44 favorite extinct kitties. The largest
0:46 cat to ever exist was likely Smileon
0:48 Populator, a saber-tooth tiger who
0:49 weighed roughly half a ton and had
0:51 [music] canine teeth up to 11 in long.
0:53 Its massive teeth allowed it to take
0:56 down big prey, including bison and giant
0:58 ground sloths, likely with just one bite
0:59 to the throat. [music] One of my
1:01 favorite extinct felines is the American
1:03 cheetah, which used to live all over the
1:05 US until it died out soon after humans
1:06 arrived. It wasn't closely related to
1:08 the modern cheetah, and it was a lot
1:10 bigger, but it was probably almost as
1:11 fast, which helps explain why its
1:13 favorite meal, the pong [music] horn, is
1:15 still the second fastest mammal in the
1:17 world today. Let's go back a little
1:19 farther in time, 30 million years ago,
1:21 to meet Proorus. It looked kind of like
1:23 a mongoose and likely lived up in the
1:25 trees hunting birds and rodents across
1:27 most of Eurasia. But it was the very
1:28 first feline which means that it was the
1:31 grand caddy of all modern kitties.
1:32 [music] So let's get into the modern
1:34 cats. Let's start with the largest
1:35 living cats over here on the panther
1:37 branch. A few lions still live in a
1:39 small part of India, but most lions roam
1:41 the savas of Africa. [music] Lions live
1:43 in social groups known as prides where
1:44 the bigger males patrol the territory
1:46 and fight off rivals while the smaller
1:48 sleeker females take care of the hunting
1:50 and the cub care. And as Kate wants me
1:52 to point out, lions can be even bigger
1:54 scavengers than hyenas. In some places,
1:55 they actually steal more food than they
1:57 hunt. Tigers, on the other hand, mostly
1:59 live in the forest of Asia, and they're
2:01 usually solitary. They tend to be ambush
2:03 hunters, using their stripey camouflage
2:05 to blend into the grass before launching
2:07 an attack on an unsuspecting unulate.
2:08 [music] And lions and tigers can get
2:10 together. Since felines tend to be much
2:11 more genetically similar than other
2:13 mammal families, that means that they
2:15 can make hybrid babies together easier
2:16 than other animals can. Perhaps the most
2:18 famous example is the liger. [music] the
2:20 offspring of a male lion and a female
2:22 tiger, which pretty much only happens in
2:24 captivity. Ligers are huge, as big as
2:26 the ancient smileons, [music] likely
2:28 because the genes that limit growth in
2:29 lions tend to come from the females.
2:31 Tyigons, which are the offspring of a
2:33 female lion and a male tiger, look
2:35 similar, but because of those genes,
2:36 they're way smaller. All right, let's
2:38 build out this panthetherra branch a
2:40 little bit more. Jaguars and leopards
2:42 are confusingly similar. Here's how to
2:44 tell them apart. Jaguars live in the
2:46 Americas, while leopards live in Africa
2:48 and Asia. And while jaguars have fur
2:49 patterns known as rosettes that are
2:51 large and have a central spot, leopard
2:53 rosettes are smaller and don't have a
2:55 spot in the middle. Also, while any
2:57 member of the panthera branch with a
2:58 black coat could be called a black
3:00 panther, jaguars and leopards are the
3:02 only species of big cats that regularly
3:04 produce individuals with extra melanin.
3:06 Confusingly, snow leopards aren't
3:07 actually that closely related to
3:09 leopards. They're more closely related
3:11 to tigers. These rare cats do live in
3:13 the snow though up in the Himalayas
3:15 where their bushy coats and thick tail
3:16 full of insulating fat help them survive
3:18 the cold. Oh wait, there's also the
3:20 clouded leopard which split off from the
3:22 rest of the panther branch a long time
3:23 ago. So it's not that closely related to
3:25 either the leopard or the snow leopard.
3:27 This slightly smaller kitty [music]
3:28 which also lives in Asia is the best
3:31 tree climber of all the big cats. Okay,
3:32 let's head over to the branch that's
3:34 more closely related to modern cats, the
3:37 Fellini branch. Let's start with the bay
3:38 cat. [music] One of the rarest cats in
3:40 the world. This small kitty only lives
3:42 on the island of Borneo, and so few have
3:44 been observed in the wild that we're not
3:46 even sure what they eat. The marbled cat
3:48 lives in Asia and looks like a mini
3:50 clouded leopard, except that it has an
3:51 extra- long tail that helps a balance as
3:53 it climbs through the trees. [music] The
3:55 serville has the longest legs of any cat
3:57 relative to its body size, and it uses
3:58 them to pounce on mice in the African
4:00 savannah. [music] The caracall, which
4:02 lives across Africa and parts of Asia,
4:04 is easily recognizable thanks to the
4:06 long hairs on the top of its ears. >> [music]
4:06 >> [music]
4:08 >> The toughs likely act as acoustic
4:10 amplifiers, allowing the cat to hear
4:12 small prey like birds nearby. [music]
4:14 The cod cod is so small it looks like a
4:16 jaguar kitten. It prowls around the
4:18 forest of Chile looking for its favorite
4:19 [music] food, a little bird known as the
4:22 wetwet. The ancilla is another itty
4:23 bitty South American cat. It uses
4:25 [music] its spots as camouflage while it
4:27 hunts little prey like lizards. About
4:29 20% of anillas, though, [music] are
4:31 totally black. That's likely because on
4:32 ancillas do most of their hunting at
4:34 night, so the darker color also works
4:35 well as camouflage. [music]
4:37 The Maray is a small cat that lives in
4:39 Mexico and Central and South America.
4:41 When the Maray is hunting its favorite
4:42 food, the tiny monkey known as the
4:44 tamarind, it sometimes mimics the
4:46 monkeykey's call to draw its prey closer
4:48 before it pounces. There are a lot of
4:50 ocelots down in the Amazon, and one of
4:52 their go-to meals is mice. [music]
4:54 Ecologists think that their rodent heavy
4:56 diet actually helps the forest grow, as
4:58 many of their victims leave stashes of
4:59 buried seeds behind that, instead of
5:01 getting eaten, germinate into new
5:04 plants. The bobcats of North America are
5:05 called bobcats because it looks like
5:07 their tail was cut off or [music]
5:08 bobbed, but no one really seems to know
5:10 why that is. It's possible that there's
5:12 no real evolutionary reason. Perhaps
5:14 some mutation caused them to grow a
5:15 short tail and it didn't help or hurt,
5:18 so it just sort of stuck around. Lynx
5:20 are closely related to bobcats and share
5:22 the same tiny tails. They also have cool
5:23 facial roughs that look like horseshoe
5:25 mustaches. [music] The larger Eurasian
5:28 lynxes love to eat row deer. On average,
5:30 each lynx takes down more than 60 deer
5:32 every [music] year. Okay, let's take a
5:34 look at another bow of this branch of
5:36 the feline tree. The cheetah, which
5:38 lives across Africa and parts of Asia,
5:39 can run faster than any other land
5:41 animal. Because every part of a cheetah
5:43 is optimized for [music] speed, they
5:44 have a flexible spine that acts like a
5:47 coiled spring, a small aerodynamic head,
5:49 enlarged [music] lungs, and a tail that
5:50 acts like a rudder when they turn at
5:52 high speed. The puma is another record
5:54 setter. It can lead distances of almost
5:56 40 ft, making it the best jumper in the
5:58 animal kingdom. Pumas [music] live all
6:00 over the Americas and different people
6:01 in different places call them everything
6:02 from cougars to mountainlands to
6:04 catamounts to panthers. [music]
6:05 The puma's closest relative is the
6:08 jaguarundi of central and south america
6:10 which is sometimes called an otter cat.
6:11 [music] That's because the jaguari not
6:13 only looks like an otter, it also tends
6:14 to live close to rivers and will even
6:17 jump in and catch fish. Okay, let's
6:18 check out the final part of the tree,
6:20 the wild cats most closely related to
6:23 our furry pets. The leopard cat looks
6:24 like well like a tiny [music] leopard.
6:26 And while leopard cats are not the
6:28 ancestors of modern domestic cats,
6:29 there's evidence that long ago in China,
6:32 some of them were kept as pets. This is
6:34 a palac's cat. Its dense gray fur and
6:36 low round ears make it look sort of like
6:38 a grumpy smurf. But it's perfectly
6:39 adapted to the cold [music] plateaus of
6:41 Mongolia and Tibet where it lives. In
6:43 fact, when there's lots of snow around,
6:44 it often sits with its paws [music] on
6:47 its tail to keep its little toies warm.
6:49 The tiny sand cat has large ears
6:51 relative to its size, allowing it to
6:52 hear prey scurrying around in the North
6:54 African desert from as far as [music]
6:56 half a kilometer away. Then there are
6:58 the cats that are just called wild cats.
7:00 [music] The African and European species
7:02 of wild cats are slightly larger than
7:04 most modern domestic cats, but otherwise
7:05 they look very similar, [music] and
7:07 that's no coincidence since domestic
7:09 cats are directly descended from wild
7:11 cats. In fact, wild cats probably
7:13 started habituating themselves to people
7:15 around 10,000 years ago, around when
7:17 humans first invented agriculture. Once
7:19 [music] we started storing things like
7:21 grain, rodents moved in, and the wild
7:23 cats likely followed soon after. [music]
7:24 Over the millennia, domestic cats
7:26 started to differ from their wild cat
7:28 ancestors. While wild cats almost
7:30 exclusively [music] eat meat, domestic
7:32 cats are able to better digest plant
7:33 matter in order to feed off of our
7:35 scraps, and they become a little less
7:37 skittish. One of the first places that
7:38 we fell in love with our new feline
7:41 companions was ancient Egypt. Egyptians
7:43 literally worshiped cats, and the modern
7:45 breed known as the Egyptian Mau is
7:46 likely [music] descended from those
7:48 cats. Remember how I mentioned earlier
7:50 that cat species can make hybrid babies
7:52 more easily than other animals can?
7:54 Well, the Bengal cat is a hybrid of a
7:56 domestic cat, usually an Egyptian mau,
7:58 and a [music] leopard cat. It's the only
8:00 pet cat that has rosette markings. And
8:02 even though most Bengals are now the
8:03 product of several generations of
8:05 domestication, they're still illegal to
8:06 own in some areas. Speaking [music] of
8:08 hybrids, there's also the Savannah cat,
8:10 which is part servil and part domestic
8:12 cat. Okay, let's get into some of the
8:15 other domestic cat breeds. Ragdoll cats
8:17 are known for their large size, long
8:19 hair, blue eyes, and tendency to go limp
8:21 when they get picked up. Ragdolls are
8:23 sometimes called puppy cats since they
8:25 are super affectionate and quickly pick
8:26 [music] up tricks like retrieving. Main
8:29 coons are the most popular cat breed and
8:31 the longest one. The longest domestic
8:33 cat ever measured was a main named
8:35 Stewie who stretched out to [music] more
8:37 than 4 feet from nose to tail. In
8:39 addition to their size, maincoun also
8:42 often exhibit polyactylism, that is
8:44 extra toes, since the gene associated
8:46 with it is common among their breed.
8:47 Scottish folds are instantly
8:49 recognizable thanks [music] to the very
8:50 cute way their ears bend down over their
8:53 heads. Two of Taylor Swift's cats are
8:55 Scottish folds. Unfortunately, that fold
8:56 is due to a genetic condition that
8:58 causes cartilage to grow abnormally. And
9:00 that means that pretty much all Scottish
9:03 folds also develop arthritis. The
9:04 American shortorthair is the descendant
9:06 of working cats that came over to the US
9:08 from Europe on ships, including the
9:08 Mayflower, [music]
9:10 and were tasked with protecting the
9:12 cargo from mice and rats. The British
9:14 shorthair is the most popular cat breed
9:16 in England. And it's a relatively chunky
9:18 boy. It's got a thick build and a wide
9:20 face that makes it look super content.
9:21 [music] No wonder it was the inspiration
9:23 for the cheshure cat in Alice in
9:25 Wonderland. Siamese cats have a
9:27 triangular face, long ears, [music] and
9:29 an elongated slender body. Their
9:30 distinct color pattern is due to the
9:32 fact that all Siamese cats are sort of
9:34 temperature-cont controlled albinos. The
9:35 warmer parts of the cat end up as white,
9:37 while the cooler parts are pigmented. [music]
9:37 [music]
9:39 Persian cats are easy to identify due to
9:41 their long hair, short legs, and
9:43 extremely flat [music] faces. In the
9:46 movie Austin Powers, Dr. Evil's cat, Mr.
9:47 Bigglesworth, [music] was originally
9:49 played by a Persian cat. But when Mr.
9:50 After Bigglesworth comes back from being
9:53 cryogenically frozen, he's bald. They
9:54 didn't shave the Persian, though.
9:56 Instead, they swapped it out for a
9:58 sphinx cat, which is naturally hairless
10:00 due to a genetic mutation. Turkish
10:02 angoras look very similar to Persian
10:03 cats, except that their faces are not
10:05 nearly as flat. [music] Angoras are more
10:06 likely than other cats to be
10:08 heterocchromatic, meaning that they have
10:11 different colored eyes. The Devon Rex is
10:12 a small kitty with a short curly coat
10:15 and wideset ears, which to me makes it
10:16 look like a mischievous kitty from a
10:18 fairy tale. It kind of looks like the
10:20 sort of cat a pixie would have. The long
10:21 and lean abbisoncinians look pretty
10:23 regal with their beautiful coats, but
10:24 they're known as the jokesters of the
10:26 cat world due to their playfulness and
10:28 actual interest in human company.
10:30 Norwegian forest cats have long fur and
10:32 dense, water-resistant undercoats that
10:34 keep them warm as they play in the snow.
10:36 Despite their bulk, these cats are great
10:38 [music] climbers. But the vast majority
10:40 of cats out there aren't purebred.
10:42 They're the feline equivalent of muts.
10:44 You might have heard these cats referred
10:46 to as domestic short hairs or long
10:48 hairs, unless you're British. If so, you
10:50 probably call them muggies. And since
10:51 there's no real selection in these cats
10:53 for specific appearance genes, these
10:55 kitties come in all sorts of colors and
10:56 patterns. Let's go through a few of
10:59 them. A tabby is any mixed breed with a
11:00 striped pattern on its coat.
11:02 Approximately 80% of domestic cats are
11:04 [music] tabies. It turns out that the
11:06 stripey jeans cats inherited from their
11:08 feline ancestors are pretty strong. That
11:10 said, there are lots of other color
11:12 patterns, too, including solid colored
11:14 cats, which are usually black. Black
11:15 cats are often associated with bad luck
11:17 and witchcraft, mostly thanks to
11:18 religious texts from the Middle [music]
11:20 Ages that associated them with the
11:23 devil. All Calico cats are female
11:24 because that orange, white, and black
11:26 pattern is linked to the X chromosome.
11:28 The name comes from the Indian city of
11:30 Calakut, which is famous for its
11:32 colorful printed fabrics. [music]
11:34 Tortoise shell cats are also female
11:35 again because the genes that control the
11:37 orange and black pattern are on the X
11:39 chromosome, but unlike calos, they are
11:41 way less white and the colors tend to be
11:43 more blended like those on a tortoise's
11:46 shell. Byolor cats have just two colors,
11:48 often black and [music] white.
11:49 Occasionally, this pattern forms so that
11:51 the kitty looks like it's wearing socks
11:53 or a dress shirt. In [music] fact, the
11:55 tuxedo version of the bycolor cat is the
11:58 basis for Mr. Mophles, the magical cat
12:00 in the musical Cats. The feline family
12:03 makes for an amazing catalog of cats. We
12:05 love our cats here at Minute Earth, and
12:07 we loved making this video. And if this
12:09 video was the perfect catnip for you or
12:11 someone you like, you'll be psyched to
12:12 learn that you can buy this awesome
12:14 poster from our DFTBA shop. It will look
12:16 great on your wall or your classroom.
12:17 And it's also the [music] perfect gift
12:19 for any cat lover in your life. Just go
12:22 to dftba.com/mittar
12:24 right meow. [music] And if you buy both
12:26 our K9 and feline poster together,
12:28 you'll get 15% off. Thank you and thanks
