It’s a story that stretches back 11 million years, cats have had a long journey from being worshiped by ancient civilizations to being worshiped by the memelords.
GIF source: MinuteEarth
It’s believed that the earliest ancestors of modern cats started out in Asia and they covered a lot of ground in their hunt for the necessities of life. Puma’s have been known to cover a thousand square kilometers in their lifetime. This nomadic lifestyle spread cat genes across the globe and the species diverged to become all the lions, tigers and bobcats that we know today.
As humans came along to pose a threat to the bigger cats, small wildcats made themselves useful. Homo sapiens were storing more and more food that was too great a temptation for rodents. Small wildcats proved themselves to be extremely useful hunters and they posed little threat to humans, so they gradually were allowed to stick around.
But this story is far better told in the form of a cute animation. Human’s pictorial history of cats continues, and the ways in which we illustrate their history must evolve as well. Bone up on your kitty knowledge with the video from MinuteEarth below: