Farmers in China domesticated Asian Leopard Cats 5,000 Years Ago

Farmers in China may have domesticated Asian leopard cats during the Neolithic era, more than 5,000 years ago, a new study says. This is a different species than the only living type of domestic cat today, the Felis catus that so many people keep as pets.

In modern China, people now keep Felis catus, not the leopard cat (P. bengalensis) that farmers domesticated so long ago, says a press release from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.  (The small Asian leopard cat should not be confused with the clouded leopard, a much larger big cat in Asia). The one species of domestic cat in the world today, descended from a wildcat in Africa and the Near East, later replaced the domesticated leopard cat in China, the researchers said.

A group of French, British and Chinese researchers did the new study that identified cat bones dating from around 3500 BC discovered in agricultural settlements in Shaanxi Province in 2001.

“All the bones belong to the leopard cat, a distant relation of the western wildcat, from which all modern domestic cats are descended,” the press release states. “The scientists have thus provided evidence that cats began to be domesticated in China earlier than 3000 BC. This scenario is comparable to that which took place in the Near East and Egypt, where a relationship between humans and cats developed following the birth of agriculture.”