Similar faces and similar skulls … The artificial selection for intensive breeding has pushed the breeds of pugs dogs or carlinos and Persian and Pequinese cats to have the same face despite the fact that they are species that, evolutionarily, have been 50 million separated years.
Dogs and cats have a very different origin: dogs descend from wolves, larger animals and long snouts, while cats descend from mountain cats.
However, the faces of the aforementioned pets (Carline dogs and Persian and Pequined cats) have converged to such an extreme that they are more similar to each other than most members of their own species or their ancestors, a phenomenon never before observed in domesticated species.
This is described by a study by scientists from the American universities of Cornell and Washington that collects PNAS magazine on Monday.
To verify this convergence, the scientists measured the shapes of the dogs of dogs and cats with a flat face through the analysis of three -dimensional scanners of the cranial morphology of domestic cats, dogs, mountain cats, wolves, and other species of the Canidae family (dogs) and the Felidae family (cats).
In addition, they studied scanners of other species such as comadrejas and carnivorous morsas. All data come from veterinary institutions, museum collections and morphosource, a digital archive of natural history.
A more delicate health
“Persian cats and Carline and Pequinese dogs have very similar forms of skull with each other, with flat and short faces, and their snouts and palettes are inclined up in the same way,” explains one of the authors, Abby Drake, a biologist at the University of Cornell in a statement from this university.
The same convergence pattern has occurred several times within each species. In the dogs, it occurred in the Bulldog races, but then it was separately in races of Asian dogs such as the Peo and Shih Tzu. In cats, the same features are observed in Persian, Himalaya and Burmese races.
When convergence is produced by natural selection, as in the development of wings in birds, bats and insects, it is a successful evolutionary feature. In the case of domesticated species, evolution has been so rapid that it can help better understand the evolutionary processes, the researchers point out.
The artificial selection from the breeding has resulted in a notable diversity of both cats and dogs, although canine diversity is even more extreme: dogs are the most diverse of all carnivores.
This convergence has had negative aspects for these pets that, according to researchers, are more susceptible to respiratory, food and childbirth problems, and “they would not survive in the wild.”
With EFE information.
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