Pet Byte 4: Cats and dogs—Best friends or deadly enemies?
According to researchers, studies confirm the common beliefs about the sociability of dogs and the privacy of cats, but this does not result in continuous internal struggles. Most cohabitations are peaceful. Moreover, they indeed speak different languages but appear to understand each other well and interpret each other's approaches properly. Thus, aspiring pet guardians should not blindly believe popular assumptions, but both knowledge and respect for species-specific pet behaviors are essential to establish harmony and balance in the household.
The dog's sociability and interspecific communication skills are widely recognized, even by observational studies. Several researches, comparing dogs’ social skills with those of wolves or chimpanzees, have emphasized the role of domestication and selective processes on dogs’ sociability. For cats, however, the issue of sociability is even more controversial. Contrary to the dog, the modern domestic cat is the product of natural selection in which humans have intervened relatively recently. Dogs were the first animals to be domesticated and have shared a common ecological niche with humans for a longer time than any other species — between 20-40,000 years ago! Domestic cats, however, are thought to be between 10,000 to 12,000 years old.