Big cats have been associated with human history since our inception. But where do their origins lie?
Photo: iStock
Cats have always fascinated us. From the tiny housecat to the Amur tiger, the almost 40 species of cats scattered all over the world are among the most recognisable fauna known to humans.
The cat family is one of the most successful faunal families and occurs on all continents except Australia and the polar regions.
But where do the origins of cats or felids lie? Why do they not occur in Australia and the poles? Why is the tiger restricted only to Asia and the puma and the jaguar to the Americas whereas the lion and leopard inhabit both Asia and Africa?
The best answers to these questions can be found in the work of United States scientists Stephen J O’Brien and Warren E Johnson, who have done seminal work on understanding felid evolution using molecular evidence.
O’Brien and Johnson, in their 2005 paper Big Cat Genomics, showed how extant or living felids evolved. According to their research, today’s felids evolved in eight distinct ‘lineages’ over a period of millions of years.
The first lineage to ‘branch off’ was Panthera in Asia. This group consists of most of the charismatic big cats that we know and can instantly recognise:
Along with these cats, the clouded leopard belonging to Panthera’s sister genus Neofelis, also diverged.
“The first of these to split off from the stem lineage is the Panthera lineage (genera Neofelis and Panthera) at c. 10.8 Ma,” Phylogeny and evolution of cats (Felidae), authored by Lars Werdelin, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi, Warren E Johnson, and Stephen J O’Brien and first published in 2010, notes.
Earlier, in Big Cat Genomics, O’Brien and Johnson had also discussed how the pantherine cats dispersed across continents:
Panthera species would remain in Asia (leopard, tiger, snow and clouded leopards) and migrate to Africa (leopard and lion) or to the Americas (jaguar). Four of the other seven lineages exist today on a single continent (bay cat and leopard cat lineages in Asia, ocelot lineage in South America, caracal lineage in Africa).
However, scientists have not been able agree yet as to how and when each of the five big cats — Tiger, lion, jaguar, leopard and snow leopard — evolved vis-à-vis each other.
There is still no consensus on the phylogenesis — the evolutionary development and diversification of a species or group of organisms, or of a particular feature of an organism — of each of these cats.
A 2010 paper by William Murphy et al titled Supermatrix and species tree methods resolve phylogenetic relationships within the big cats, Panthera (Carnivora: Felidae), explains the problem:
A significant problem exists with respect to the precise phylogeny of these highly threatened great cats. Despite multiple publications on the subject, no two molecular studies have reconstructed Panthera with the same topology. These evolutionary relationships remain unresolved partially due to the recent and rapid radiation of pantherines in the Pliocene, individual speciation events occurring within less than 1 million years, and probable introgression between lineages following their divergence.
The authors of the same paper, though, used “…novel and published DNA sequence data from the autosomes, both sex chromosomes and the mitochondrial genome…” to support a hypothesis that the tiger was closest to the snow leopard while the lion, leopard and jaguar were closer to each other.
The Late Miocene Radiation of Modern Felidae: A Genetic Assessment by Johnson, O’Brien, Murphy and others had also suggested this same phylogenesis.
The lion, jaguar and leopard, part of the pantherine cats that evolved in northern Central Asia, spread to America and Africa. The lion later became extinct in America while the jaguar remained on the continent.
The tiger and the snow leopard, meanwhile, remained in Asia and spread across the continent.
This, then, describes in a nutshell, how the five felids known colloquially as ‘Big Cats’ or ‘Pantherine cats’ developed.
The years to come may reveal newer insights about their evolution and phylogeny as science advances further. But one thing is clear: Unless human activities stop, these cats that have evolved over millions of years, could disappear into the sands of time.
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