Tame, but How Tame?: teacher key

Cats, grade 12 edition, written for 12th grade and up. The purr and the house cat are both less settled than they look. Weigh the evidence on how cats purr, when they were domesticated and how much of the wild is left.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What did the 2023 study find about cat voice boxes from cats that had died?
   • They could make purr-range sounds with no brain signals and no muscle action (answer)
   • They could not make sound
   • They only roared
2. How did dogs and house cats differ in coming to live with people?
   • Dogs evolved by natural selection only
   • People bred dogs for wanted traits, while house cats mostly evolved through natural selection (answer)
   • Both were bred in the Middle Ages
3. Why might the Chinese cats not be the source of modern pets?
   • They were too small
   • House-cat DNA looks more closely related to the Near Eastern wildcat (answer)
   • They lived too long ago to matter
4. What does the Cyprus burial show, and what is argued about it?
   • A person and cat were buried 9,500 years ago, but some evidence says the cat may not be a direct ancestor (answer)
   • It proves cats came from China
   • It shows cats cannot be pets
5. What does feral mean here?
   • Gone wild (answer)
   • Very old
   • Spotted

Words

• domesticated: tamed over generations
• feral: gone wild
• millet: a grain
• vocal: of the voice
• interbreed: mate together