This Animated Map Shows How Cats Spread Across the World

Source: © Shutterstock

Have you ever wondered whether there were cats on every continent or not? Or maybe you’ve wondered how they got to every continent. Well, the answer is, yes – well, except Antarctica, but that might be a given. But how did they get across all the oceans and into homes all across the world? Well, the answer lies with ancient cat DNA that stretches back thousands of years by a team of scientists and the results were published recently in a journal called Nature, and here is how cats spread all throughout the world

It all began it what is known today, as modern-day Turkey. DNA analysis show that about 10,000 years ago, the wild ancestors of cats were used as rodent control cats for the early farmers. The agriculture revolution took hold and spread, and by 2,500 BC, cats were now in Cyprus, an area where they had never existed before. The following few thousand years, cats accompanied their humans northward, into Romania and Bulgaria.

By the year 800 BC, cats were now in Egypt where they weren’t just thought of as things to be worshipped, and Egyptian cats, primarily, became a popular way of controlling rodents on Roman and Viking ships, and it was really these two groups who really got the cat revolution to boom.

The Vikings and Romans, in their many travels, were the ones who brought cats to all areas of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Then, when it was the Europeans turn to hit the seas and sail to the Americas, they too, had felines aboard to help control rodent problems.

Now, in today’s modern world, nearly one-third of American homes are home to at least one house cat. In numerical terms, that is about 93.5 million house cats in just the U.S., alone.

Cats have really conquered the world by the humans’ side, and now that they have, they deserve to rest easy.