Talk:Wildcat
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[edit] Article needs to be moved
This article needs to be moved to Wildcat (animal) or some such, and the spelling changed throughout. The current name of the article violates Wikipedia conventions by capitalizing the second word. And it shouldn't be two words, but one. "Wild cat" means "any species of cat that is wild, other than the great cats"; "wildcat" refers specifically to the animals in this article. E.g.: "The Asian leopard cat is a wild cat" is a correct statement, while "the Asian leopard cat is a wildcat" is an incorrect one. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] - 05:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
- I agree. Would also be a good time to fix redirects. It is not that much work, shall we do it immediatly? --KimvdLinde 05:48, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "African wildcat"
It is incorrect to say an extant species is the ancestor of another extant species. So it should read that they share a common ancestor. --LGao 3:38, 26 May, 2006
- Well, not exactly, as for example in the case of parapatric speciation, which could be seen as the way domestication has occured. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 19:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] "North American wildcat"
The North American wildcat is not mentioned, either in terms of existence or range? North America and Central America have an animal by this name, as well as, of course, lynxes, pumas, and panthers.
- Those other felines are not in the genus Felis. see this link. The subspecies are generally reckoned to be three, not two. The first domestication of F. s. catus comes after the development of agricultur of course, a point that should be mentioned, as it's more important than an actual date, like the fanciful 8000 BCE mentioned in the entry. --Wetman 10:32, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Articles
Shouldn't the Silvestris and Lybica have deffrent articles?Sitenl 16:28, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
- silvestris and lybica are genrally considered a single species, hence a single article. Note: Some clasifications of the genus Felis group silvestris and lybica as separate species, and group ornata as a sub-species of lybica. Most seem to consider them a single species of Felis silvestris containing several subspecies groups, i.e. silvestris, lybica, ornata and catus. Some examples of these conflicting classifications can be seen at The Cyber Zoomobile, Felis and Linnean Classification of the Order Carnivora --Sonelle 13:53, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes, the silvestris and lybica are the same species, though they look different -- George cowie
[edit] not easily mistaken?
The article says that wild cats would not normally be mistaken for domesitic cats. Yet all three pictures in the article look just like house cats to me. Perhaps they are not a good selection of pictures? Strait 01:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I couldn't comment about European wild cats, never having seen one, but growing up I had a house cat that looked exactly like the African wild cat I photographed. --Sonelle [[User_talk:Sonelle|(talk)]] 17:39, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Its difficult to tell the difference sometimes expecially if there is nothing to measure the size against. Also there is a lot of interbreeding with feral cats going on (in Scotland) so there are fewer true wildcats around. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.206.163.179 (talk) 14:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I suspect there is some cultural bias going on in this article. Wildcats are wild animals and should not be considered domesticatable, but domestic housecats are indistinguishable from these animals, as many have already mentioned. I'm sorry, but this differentiation doesn't sound very scientific to me.Jarhed (talk) 03:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] domestic/wild interbreeding as "threat" to wild populations
In the setion on european wild cats, the interbreeding of wild and domestic cats is mentioned in a couple of places as a potential threat to wild populations, but the nature of this threat is not discussed. If anything, I'd think the wild populations might benefit from a wider gene pool. Genes from domestics that impact positively on survival could be expected to proliferate in the wild population, and those with a detrimental effect would presumably remain rare.
If it's only the "purity" of the wild population that's threatened and not the survival of the cats themselves, maybe the problem has more to do with our way of thinking about the cats than with it has to do with the actual cats. If someone has an alternate theory, I'm interested to hear it. --Eloil 09:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Upper case vs. lower case
Suggestion: rather than reverting each others' edits repeatedly, a discussion here on the talk page would be a better choice. Mmm (talk) 20:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- The discussion is on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mammals. - UtherSRG (talk) 20:51, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- See also Talk:Bobcat#Capitalization_again. Beyazid (talk) 17:58, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Self-domesticating
I read the reference, and it says nothing about "self-domesticating", as well it should not. Let's take the 9500 years ago figure for domestication of felids as a given. Imagine yourself back then living on a farm or ranch in the Near East, working to provide for your family and your community. There are desert cats all around, and they find it beneficial to move into your barn where the rats live. You are an animal husbantry expert, and you have children that you know would love a kitten. So instead of you, the wildlife expert of your era, trapping and domesticating a desert cat, the cat domesticates you. Come on, "self-domesticating"? Would someone please provide a more authoritative link? Either that, or rid this article of this intellectual BS?? Have a great day!!!Jarhed (talk) 03:56, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
