Smaller cats had a few advantages. They need less food. Plus, they’re spry. Massive lions are successful hunters just 20% of the time. But African wildcats bring down a whopping 60% of their prey.

Domestic cats the world over can trace their ancestry back to North African wildcats that lived around 2,000 years ago. It was from these feral felines that the very first domestic cats were produced, ...

A new genome study is providing some insight into the matter by determining the timing of a key milestone in feline domestication – the introduction of domestic cats into Europe from North Africa.

Like a toy on a string, the timing of cat domestication has been a moving target. Now researchers have pounced on a new timeline suggesting that tame descendants of African wildcats left the continent ...