[HN Gopher] Cat Gap
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Cat Gap
Author : Petiver
Score : 182 points
Date : 2025-12-10 04:09 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| grubbs wrote:
| Welp. Now I'm in a wikipedia hole of how cats came to be.
| Razengan wrote:
| The universe was created to incorporate cats.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Ignoring the much more obvious explanation that they simply
| buggered off to do their own thing and there was nobody around to
| bang a plate with a fork.
| msuniverse2026 wrote:
| "We must close the cat gap." - JFK, 1960
| CalRobert wrote:
| Animals could be bred and... slaughtered...
| corgiorgy wrote:
| I used to run a Twitter bot called @itsavailable that would mine
| interesting strings that were not registered .com domains and
| tweet them out at a regular cadence. One of its sources was the
| most-visited English-language Wikipedia page titles in the past
| hour.
|
| One of the only domains I ever bothered purchasing for myself was
| https://catgap.com
| anileated wrote:
| Hat tip on both your (new?) domain name and your username.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| Thank you for brightening my day with your website. That is one
| adorable (and adorably annoyed-looking) cat.
| dostick wrote:
| Don't click that link!
| taneq wrote:
| ?
| naian wrote:
| The woman is pushing the cat's lip up with her finger. It's
| not painful to the cat.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Warning: if you open that link you'll see a woman using her
| finger pulling apart a hole on a pussy.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You are technically correct (the best kind of correct.)
| felineflock wrote:
| The cat gap is due to the long time it took for the mutant
| descendants of Noah's cats to get to America.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| I'm surprised that sampling bias is not in the list. Is it
| possible that these fossils simply haven't been found yet?
| hurturue wrote:
| have you tried turning the computer off on on?
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I think the postulation is that the cats would be so abundant,
| it shouldn't be hard to find their fossils.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| That was my first conclusion, too - the absence of something in
| the fossil record does not mean that it was not there, just
| that it did not fossilise.
|
| For one, predators in general often have more gracile build,
| high power to weight ratio - and don't fossilise well. They're
| also much rarer than herbivores, of course. This means the
| signal in the fossil record is much weaker and any deviation
| seems much greater, as you have to turn up the gain to get
| meaningful data.
|
| Perhaps cats during that period were predominantly dry desert
| hunters - it _is_ a common niche for felidae - and that
| environment produces _checks wristwatch_ few fossils.
|
| Perhaps there was another critter extant during that period
| that just found the crunch of cat bones irresistible, and they
| all got scavenged.
|
| Perhaps they developed culture and cremated their dead.
|
| Dunno. All that said the E-O was a big transition and it likely
| did result in gigadeaths, and predators would have been harder
| hit, ultimately and proportionally.
| usrusr wrote:
| Similar thoughts crossed my mind as well. But then there's
| the repopulation with a species that can be traced from Asia.
| The pre-gap felines just aren't part of the post-gap set. If
| some were descendants of some endemic low-fossilization
| branch, chances are they'd be connected across the gap
| through similarities.
| vlachen wrote:
| An obvious failure of the Cat Distribution System.
| verbify wrote:
| I once was thinking that if intelligent machines surpassed human
| intelligence, the end game would be human intelligence would
| atrophy but the machines would continue to serve us.
|
| Then I had a humorous thought - what if this already happened,
| i.e. cats were superintelligent, invented humans to serve them
| and then they had no need for their own intelligence.
| colordrops wrote:
| This is sort of the story of The Time Machine.
| nakedneuron wrote:
| This is brilliant.
|
| So, if machines will be decent servants to the cats, will
| humans get x-ed out of the equation?
| peanball wrote:
| A topic of the "Three Robots" episode of Death Love & Robots,
| kind of. Sorry for the fandom link.
|
| https://lovedeathrobots.fandom.com/wiki/Three_Robots#:~:text.
| ..
| gradus_ad wrote:
| It's funny to think that no matter how our technology develops,
| cats will be right there along for the ride, completely
| ignorant of it all. It's humorously comforting to think of an
| interstellar civilization powered by fusion and AGI serving
| cats just as they're served now. Scratching posts on starships
| seems to be inevitable.
| bbarnett wrote:
| This seems like a book.
|
| Humans extinct for a billion years, AGI and robots tasked to
| feed and "take care of the cats".
|
| I imagine entire cities, houses built, all empty save cat and
| humanform robot.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I would recommend the two episodes "Three Robots" and
| "Three Robots: Exit Strategies" from the anthology series
| Love, Death and Robots if you like this kind of humor.
| xingped wrote:
| This was a minor plot point in that one black mirror
| episode with the robots on a tourism trip to Earth, lol
| shawn_w wrote:
| You mean Love, Death and Robots?
| marcher wrote:
| In the puzzle game series The Talos Principle, intelligent
| robots (who were made to outlive humanity after a species-
| ending global pandemic) seem to have the exact same kind of
| affinity for caring for cats that humans do. It's actually
| really sweet and cute.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| "There will come soft rains" Ray Bradbury
| eh_why_not wrote:
| There is such book if you s/cats/dogs/, from 1952!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_(novel) [by Simak]
|
| Gives you insight into the zeitgeist of the era; apparently
| "hydroponics and helicopters" would be tearing society
| apart. :)
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| You might like the game Stray. Here's the trailer:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJawWyRUOBM
|
| It's about a cat that lives in a city of robots long after
| humans are extinct.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| The domestication of cats happened because of the invention
| of farming.
|
| If you store grain in a granary, it attracts a lot of
| insects, rodents, etc. Cats that could tolerate getting close
| to human settlements found a good food source. And humans
| like this, because the cats protect the grain without eating
| it. So you can see why ancient agrarian societies like the
| Egyptians held cats in high esteem.
|
| And despite only having a few thousand years to adapt to each
| other, ends up cats and humans can understand each other and
| form emotional bonds pretty easily.
|
| I imagine we'll see cats on spaceships of the future just
| like they were the norm on ships in the age of sail.
| taneq wrote:
| Maybe the cats were themselves invented by mice?
| nervousvarun wrote:
| Obligatory Banks Culture universe reference:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series
|
| Basically when the "minds" are benevolent deities all scenarios
| are possible including this one. We can spend our time with
| cats, we can even turn into cats...as he writes about
| "Changers" who genetically alter themselves or shift species at
| whim.
|
| And as always if someone acts up and violates the Golden Rule
| they get a slap drone: https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Slap-
| drone
| cryptonector wrote:
| _Red Dwarf joins the chat_
| euroderf wrote:
| Cat gap? Divine intervention. The divinity? Cats.
| lucketone wrote:
| So during what period cats were missing?
|
| Duration is clear, start and end not clear
| david_shaw wrote:
| _> The cat gap is a period in the fossil record of
| approximately 25 million to 18.5 million years ago in which
| there are few fossils of cats or cat-like species found in
| North America._
|
| 25M - 18.5M years ago.
| lucketone wrote:
| In my defence, word "ago" was on the other line, so I kind of
| skipped it.
| Sharlin wrote:
| There are many fascinating things about cats, but one of the
| things I often think about is how interesting it is that an
| animal of such solitary nature became domesticated so easily, and
| how social - and socially intelligent - domestic cats came to be,
| despite stereotypes. To the point that many housecats, and entire
| breeds, are called "dog-like" in their demeanor. Female feral
| cats also form social groups, "colonies", though unfixed males
| are certainly more territorial. This is evidently an example of
| neoteny, the retention of juvenile traits in adulthood, seeing
| that most felids do have a social period while living with their
| mother and littermates.
| p_l wrote:
| Cats are actually very social animals, they just don't firm
| similar pack structures to dogs
|
| With modem technology it became feasible to observe cats
| without disruption and it showed communal behaviours, including
| communal care for offspring and IIRC even bringing food to
| share.
|
| All along the line of somewhat transitionally joined
| communities instead of more stable groups
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There are some interesting reels showing cats apparently
| learning English using speech buttons.
|
| Cats are _very_ communicative, which suggests they 're
| strongly social, in the broadest sense.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Yes, this is (outdoors, stray, or feral) _domestic cats_ ,
| which is exactly what I mentioned. And as I said, it's
| largely the females and their juvenile offspring that form
| colonies - unfixed adult males, while certainly capable of
| having friendly social encounters on "no cat's lands",
| definitely don't willingly share their territory with other
| adult males.
|
| But my point was that their immediate ancestor (and
| practically still the same species - they easily interbreed)
| the African wildcat is not similarly gregarious, and neither
| is almost any other felid, big or small.
| akkad33 wrote:
| Cats are not so solitary. They can actually live in communities
| but they are not pack animals
| Sharlin wrote:
| Which is exactly what I said. _Feral or stray domestic cats_
| form colonies, because domestic cats are more social than
| their immediate ancestors. The African wildcat is not
| particularly social, not in the way domestic cats are. Which
| is why it 's interesting.
| ursAxZA wrote:
| I've always wondered what it would feel like to dream as a cat. I
| don't think I've ever had a dream where my body actually changed
| shape. Being loved just for existing seems like a pretty solid
| evolutionary strategy.
| the_af wrote:
| > _I've always wondered what it would feel like to dream as a
| cat_
|
| If you haven't already, read "A Dream of a Thousand Cats", one
| of the Sandman stories. It was also adapted by Netflix as the
| last episode of season 1 of The Sandman.
| qwertytyyuu wrote:
| I'm disappointed this wasn't about felines
| DonHopkins wrote:
| For more cat facts, see CatFACS, cat --help, and man cat.
|
| https://animalfacs.com/catfacs_new
| mjd wrote:
| I was a bit disappointed that this didn't turn out to be
| analogous to the "bee space":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive#Bee_space
| rsynnott wrote:
| Mr President, we most not allow a cat gap!
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(page generated 2025-12-14 20:00 UTC)