If We Weren't Around, Would Cats Fare Better Than Dogs?

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This post was written with Jonathan Losos, Professor of Biology at Washington University, Director of the Living Earth Collaborative, and William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor.

In A Dog's World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans, Jessica Pierce and I concluded that many dogs would do well when we're not around. Size, color, coat type, personality, temperament, stamina, and other individual characteristics don't necessarily make an individual dog any less likely to survive in our absence. Neither do body size, food, gender, caregiving, sociality, cognitive capacities, and emotional intelligence factor in. Of course, dogs possessing what we call genetic "malware" that prohibits them from breeding or giving birth without human intervention clearly won't survive in a posthuman future.

Dogs are a very diverse species―there is no universal dog―and around 75 percent of the billion or so dogs on Earth already are free-ranging or feral. We argued that many dogs already survive on their own and they and others could do so without us. Homed dogs are not the template for figuring out how dogs in general would do without us. There’s also a tendency for people to overplay their own importance to their dog's well-being.

Because dogs descended from a common wolf ancestor, they still have wolf DNA in their genes along with ancient memory traces that still lurk in their brains. These indelible engrams still influence what they do and how they feel, and likely will shape how they do without us.

There are few hard-and-fast answers to the many questions about how posthuman dogs will fare without us. But what about cats who share many similar traits? Most people Jessica and I asked said dogs wouldn't do well without us but cats would be fine

Imagining the lives of cats in a world without humans

In The Cat’s Meow, Jonathan offers detailed discussions of the behavior, genetics, evolution, and myriad other aspects of how domestic cats came to be who they are, including domestic cat-wild cat interactions and the nature of cat-human relationships. Cats are more social than many people realize, they come in different sizes, breeds, and personalities, they can compete with wild predators, and might do well on their own.

The first question is whether they could get outside. In the United States, the vast majority of pet cats are indoor only (though the percentages are lower in other countries). If humans disappeared, they would eventually starve.

There's no doubt that cats have the potential to live on their own, independent of humans—one need look no further than the two million cats roaming wild Australia, or the many well-established non-homed, non-provisioned cats living around the world. Cats are famous for their ease of reverting to a lifestyle similar to that of the ancestral North African wildcat though the lack of detailed study of habits of both non-homed cats and African wildcats makes comparisons difficult.

That’s not to say that all cats would easily revert to a wildcat lifestyle. Like so much else in biology, the reason is both nature and nurture. On the nature (genetics) side, many pet cats don’t like to go outside, even if they get a chance, and of those who do, some are avid hunters, but others are inept or have no interest at all; breeds vary in these tendencies.

On the nurture side, mama cats can have a big influence on the hunting skills of their offspring and what type of prey they prefer (though this topic, too, requires further study. Despite this variability, it’s safe to say that without humans around, at least some cats would have no problem getting enough to eat.

The bigger challenge would be predation. In the natural world, big predators routinely kill smaller ones. Lions kill leopards who kill cheetahs. Wolves do the same to coyotes, who then turn on foxes. The reasons are several-fold: smaller predators are competitors for food, a threat to the young, and probably are tasty! Indeed, in North America, non-owned cats are scarce in natural habitats thanks to coyotes; when studied, one coyote in five around Los Angeles had recently eaten a cat.

In a world without humans, cats would have another problem: dogs. In homes, dogs and cats can often coexist, sometimes on quite friendly terms. But in the wild, we would expect them to revert to their ancestral ways. And because most dogs are substantially bigger than most cats, dogs would likely be a major threat but some might join forces. Given that dogs were domesticated much earlier than cats, the role that dogs played in cat domestication requires study (a point made by Jonathan's Washington University colleague, Fiona Marshall).

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As with dogs, many of the traits characterizing certain breeds would probably disqualify them from survival in the wild. The noseless face and extremely long hair of Persian cats are at the top of the list, as well as the near-hairlessness of the Sphynx and the diminutive legs of the Munchkin; one might wonder about the various hair textures and colors of other breeds, not to mention folded, curly or enormous ears; bobbed tails; and elongated faces of others.

One other factor would affect the future of domestic cats in a humanless world: hybridization. Wildcats (Felis sylvestris) are found throughout much of Africa, Asia and Europe. Although the domestic cat is descended from the North African wildcat (F. sylvestris lybica), it readily interbreeds with members of all wildcat subspecies. In reality, a post-human world would see wildcat and domestic cat populations merging together, as is already happening in Scotland and other places. Dogs are known to interbreed with wolves, coyotes, and jackals so perhaps the same outcome would ensue where those species co-occur.

A more intriguing question is whether domestic cats would interbreed with more distantly related feline species. Several breeds—most notably the Bengal and Savannah—were produced by crossing domestic cats with Asian leopard cats and servals, respectively. Would such genetic mixing occur in nature? No such cases have been reported, but it’s always possible.

So, who would do better?

It’s hard to say given what we know about extant dogs and cats. Misleading stereotypes including that cats are asocial and don’t need us should be shelved and we must use what we know to make comparative predictions. Cats are more independent than dogs now but might experience greater predation when they're on their own.

This is an exciting field of study that depends on input from a wide variety of researchers including biological and social scientists who study animal-human relationships, and we need more details to learn just how similar dogs and cats might be when they're on their own. Facile predictions that companion felines would do better than dogs appear unlikely given what we now know.

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