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