• S&T Moderators: VerbalTruist | Skorpio | alasdairm

Biology What, biologically, is a cat?

I would say that when two cats breed their offspring will be a cat 100% of the time.

I get why a person would look for a justification to not call it a cat until a later point in its development.

But logic says that if sperm and egg carry huma...sorry...cat dna , and the eventual kitten is a cat, then it is also a cat throughout its entire stay in her mommy's tummy.
 
I would say that when two cats breed their offspring will be a cat 100% of the time.
ah, so you disagree with the theory of evolution? what is the basis of your disagreement?

speciation is such a slow process that its barely noticeable. in animals at least, you can shove a couple of grass species together and get wheat overnight, viruses don't even really make sense to be considered as species, bacteria are kind of in the middle. but according to our best science, eventually two very outlying cats will give birth to a non cat that is extremely close to being a cat.
 
A human with several genetic mutations is still a human. I am... a few hundred (?) mutations away from a cat's DNA. How many mutations does it take before something is no longer designated their original supposed species?
So this is the biology equivalent of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.
 
ok so if two "outlying cats" produce a brand new species very similar to cats, does that make it inferior in such a way that you could theoretically exterminate it before its born? Just curious. Seems like calling it anything other than a cat would just be a technicality that wouldn't change the rationale at all.
 
So this is the biology equivalent of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.
kinda but its much more nuanced. i'd meant to reply to @Negentropic's point earlier then forgot.

from my understanding as not a geneticist, there are some genes that are so fundamental to every process that one or two single nucliotide mutations mean that the entire organism will never function. i would say that posession of working versions of these genes is pretty important in the definition of membership of a given species. then there are some bits like endogenous retroviruses that are extremely poorly conserved because they don't code for anything so you could pretty much have the entire thing different for every member of that species. even position of bits of genetic material within a genome is variable (i.e. transposons), and these play an extremely important role in evolution- so perhaps if enough transpons jumped in the right way, maybe you'd no longer have something that qualifies as a member of the species its parents came from. but i don't know for sure.


ok so if two "outlying cats" produce a brand new species very similar to cats, does that make it inferior in such a way that you could theoretically exterminate it before its born? Just curious. Seems like calling it anything other than a cat would just be a technicality that wouldn't change the rationale at all.
this is a thread about what a cat is. i'm not debating abortion with you any further, i've already said even if you have a healthy baby, the mother should be allowed to abort it so its not relevant to my stance. please don't bring it up again in this thread.

the question is, at which point, during the gestation of a cat, does it become a cat. your definition of pregnancy from the other thread implies implantation is where you think a life starts, so prior to that, however, things can be implanted that have no chance, ever, of becoming a member of any species. so i think that is a bad place to put the line, because we'd have to include the precursors to placental cells (which can be implanted, and will give a positive pregnancy cells) with none of the cells that eventually develop into a fetus, as a cat. so i think it is at some point after implantation but before birth.
 
Mmm. Two of them please but can I please have the toast served on the side I don't want it getting crushed.

And I'll be dead honest with an admission right here and no shame either I've never actually eaten pussy before so that would be a new experience as well.
Are you in London? Should be some great escort services in the area.

:)
 
Are you in London? Should be some great escort services in the area.

:)
Close! Except my Geography is terrible, I'm totally offmap so I have always struggled to recall whether we are 60 miles North, or South, of London.

I used to tell people it was South, but I'm almost sure it's actually North.

So relative though I mean it's only a direction in a crater.


Get this though. Our town phone area code, hold on I just had to look this up, seems to have changed. London is the centre of all things in this crater, not necessarily semetrically.



"The area codes for London have changed on quite a few occasions in the past, all to try and accommodate the growth in demand for landline numbers.

London was allocated the ‘01’ code in 1958. This area code would cover 10 million numbers and lasted until 1990, where the code was split. Inner London numbers became ‘071’ and outer London became ‘081’. As part of a change across the UK in 1995, all area codes gained a 1, so these numbers became ‘0171’ and ‘0181’. The day this occurred is commonly known as “PhONEday”.

However, the “Big Number Change” happened in 2000 and all UK phone numbers were reorganised to allow for more numbers to be created. This meant that London went back to a single area code of ‘020’ and the divide between inner and outer London was removed – instead being replaced with ‘(020) 7’ and ‘(020) 8’ numbers."


How complicated did they make that?

Our town code, Bedford. Nothing place.


01234!


Like, no other place in UK has 01234 as area code.

😀
 
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I don't know that much about cats, but what I do know is that I wish I weren't allergic to them. Perfect pets, not hard to maintain, cleanup is easy, and they do their own thing without being too needy. If only I were not allergic :mad:

I don't know if taking antihistamines every day is good for you since I already take mirtazapine.
 
My daughter has 4 cats.. She adores them. Behold:

Pino (big grey fluffy desexed male)

Meemo (medium white desexed female)

Pickle (small black & white, not sure of sex)

Daisy (small grey female)





 
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