Felidae Totally Explained

Felidae is the biological family of the cats; a member of this family is called a felid. They are the most strictly carnivorous mammals of the nine families in the order Carnivora. The first felids emerged during the Oligocene, about 30 million years ago. The most familiar feline is the Domestic Cat or House Cat, which first became associated with humans about 10,000 years ago. Its wild relative, the Desert Wildcat, still lives in the Near East and Africa, although habitat destruction has restricted its range.
Other well-known members of the feline family include big cats such as the Lion, the Tiger, the Leopard, the Jaguar, the Cougar, and the Cheetah, and other wild cats such as the lynxes and the Caracal. The extinct subfamily Machairodontinae, including the "saber-toothed cats" such as the well known Smilodon, were also true felines, in contrast to similar animals such as Thylacosmilus or Nimravidae.

Evolution

There are 41 known species of felines in the world today which have all descended from a common ancestor about 10.8 million years ago. This taxa originated in Asia and spread across continents by crossing land bridges. As reported in the journal Science, testing of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA by Warren Johnson and Stephen O'Brien of the U.S. National Cancer Institute demonstrated that ancient cats evolved into eight main lineages that diverged in the course of at least 10 migrations (in both directions) from continent to continent via the Bering land bridge and Isthmus of Panama. The Panthera species are the oldest and the Felis species are the youngest. They estimated that 60 percent of the modern species of cats developed within the last million years. Most felids have a haploid number of 18 or 19. New world cats (those in Central and South America) have a haploid number of 18, possibly due to the combination of two smaller chromosomes into one larger chromosome.
Prior to this discovery, biologists had been largely unable to establish a family tree of cats from the fossil record because the fossils of different cat species all look very much alike, differing primarily in size.
The felines' closest relatives are thought to be the civets, hyenas, and mongooses. All feline species share a genetic anomaly that prevents them from tasting sweetness.

Classification

FAMILY FELIDAE

Lineage 1: Panthera, Uncia, Neofelis

Lineage 2: Pardofelis, Catopuma,

Lineage 3: Leptailurus, Caracal, Profelis

Lineage 4: Leopardus

Lineage 5: Lynx

Lineage 6: Puma, Acinonyx

Lineage 7: Prionailurus

Lineage 8: Felis The last four lineages are more related to each other than to other lineages and form a clade within Felinae.

Fossil felines

The oldest known true feline (Proailurus) lived in the Oligocene and Miocene eras. During the Miocene it gave way to Pseudaelurus. Pseudaelurus is believed to be the latest common ancestor of the two extant subfamilies and the extinct subfamily, Machairodontinae. This group, better known as the sabertooth cats, became extinct in the Late Pleistocene era. It includes the genera Smilodon, Machairodus, Dinofelis and Homotherium. The total number of fossil Felids that are known to science isn't very high. Most extinct cat-like animals, once regarded as members of the Felidae, later turned out to be members of related, but distinct, families: the "false sabretooths" Nimravidae and Barbourofelidae. The true cats Felidae radiated quite recently and most of the extant species are relatively young.

Cited references

General references

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