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The earliest known domesticated cat in what is now the United States kick the bucket 466 age ago in a shipwreck off the slide of Florida , a new cogitation line up .
The ship waspart of a Spanish colonizing expeditionled by the conquistador Tristán de Luna y Arellano , who was sail from Mexico under the Spanish jacket . In September 1559,a hurricane in Pensacola Baywrecked several of the 11 ships , which had been cast anchor near the new Spanish settlement of Santa María de Ochuse . research worker found one of these crash , known asEmanuel Point II , in2006 . This shipwreck contain the corpse of an grownup and a jejune domestic quat ( Felis catus ) , consort to the new study , which was published April 14 in the journalAmerican Antiquity .
Cats have long accompanied sailors on ships, as was the case for the first domestic cats in what is now the U.S.
" Our current apprehension is that alldomestic cat arrive from ancestors in the Middle East . So , they had to be introduced to the Americas by people , " said study co - authorMartin Welker , an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in zooarchaeology at the University of Arizona .
Archaeologists had previously found domestic cat stay in other other Spanish settlements , including the Indigenous Taíno townsfolk of En Bas Saline in what is now Haiti , where Chistopher Columbus set ashore in 1492 . But Columbus never made it to continental North America . or else , " the Spanish dispatch in Florida were really the first opportunities for domesticated cats to make what is today the U.S. , " Welker told Live Science in an email .
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Bones belonging to a cat and rat from the Emanuel Point II shipwreck off the coast of Florida.
The team analyzed the khat bones using several proficiency , include zooarchaeological ( comparing the bones from the shipwreck to the bones of advanced cats ) , isotopic ( surveying unlike chemical substance signatures ) and genetic ( learn ancient DNA ) analyses , Welker say . The resultant corroborate that the ivory belonged to domesticated cat and provided insights into their feline ancestries as well as the adult cat ’s dieting .
" What was interesting , is that our cat was not eating the rats on plank the ship but had a dieting more in descent with what we ’d gestate for the sailor boy , " study co - authorJohn Bratten , an anthropologist at the University of West Florida , tell Live Science in an email . This indicates that the sailors fed the grownup cat either because the so-and-so did not allow enough food , or out of affection , the researcher write in the study .
" It was interesting to mean about the idea of the cat being a pet or one that was await after by the Spanish skimmer , " Bratten added .
The hereditary psychoanalysis suggest that both the adult and juvenile cat settle from European relatives . While it ’s unimaginable to determine how the cats got onto the ship , one idea is that they slipped aboard while it was anchored or tail in Mexico before sailing for Florida , Bratten say .
However , they may have been bring aboard intentionally , given that qat serve verify the skunk and black eye population that could get into solid food supplies and transmit diseases , Welker said .
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It would n’t be surprising if the cat had been mouser , because " from their domestication until their arrival in the New World , cats ' primary role in many community was pest control , something that they were well suited to and that required little supervision from their human cohabitants , " the investigator write in the study . The ancient Romans in all probability introduced computerized axial tomography to Europe for this reason , grant to the subject field .
Today , one in every three U.S. households has a pet bozo , accord to the study , and there are more than 600 million domestic true cat worldwide .
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