Chapter 855: Felidae and Sociality

The second meal, the third meal, the fourth meal.

At the end of the day, Bi Fang fed four times. He came over every three hours to feed her until ten o'clock in the evening.

From sheep to deer to rabbits, these are all cheetahs' favorite foods. Until the fourth time, Bi Fang brought sheep blood sausage, and the management staff no longer had to stand outside the barbed wire fence.

The cheetah also let down his guard against Bifang, a man who was almost always hanging around in front of him. He just thought that he had changed into a tough "keeper", but he was still a little unclear as to why his eating pattern suddenly changed so much.

In the past, you only needed one meal a day to be full, but now that has completely changed.

Early the next morning, Bi Fang got up at six o'clock to continue feeding. Pulling the chain woke up the resting cheetah.

When Harley saw the uninvited guest, he latched onto the edge of the iron fence with vigilance. After seeing the person coming in, he still did not relax his vigilance. However, compared to the explosive state he had just met yesterday, he was much better. He was just walking around the iron fence. .

"Cheetahs can generally eat 2.5 kilograms of food per day. If they cannot catch prey for a long time, they can even eat food equivalent to one-fifth of their own weight in extreme conditions."

"In some areas of the Middle East, tamed cheetahs hunt for hunters. Just giving it a spoonful of blood is enough. I changed Harley's food to one pound at a time, which is 0.5 kilograms. He feeds it five times a day with high frequency. Hang out in front of it and spend more time together.”

"You see, Harley is already very familiar with my presence today."

After every feeding, Bifang would stay for a while under Harley's gaze.

From the first ten minutes, the second twenty minutes, and the fourth one hour, the relationship between the two parties is progressing rapidly.

[I understand, Fang Shen’s true form is actually a druid! 】

[An excellent survival master must also be proficient in excellent animal training skills, I am sure]

[I always imagine that I am as powerful as Fang Shen, so that even if I have no money, I can travel around the world without worrying about getting lost or starving to death]

"Today is the first time we feed him after a night. He only needs to wait for half an hour. What I brought him today is ostrich liver. I hope he will like it."

"On the grassland, large cheetahs like to chase antelopes. Those that run slowly and are unresponsive are easily eaten."

"Then there are deer. Deer and antelope are both targets of cheetahs' attacks. On grasslands where antelopes are not found, cheetahs will turn their attention to deer."

"But young cheetahs don't have enough strength and skills to eat antelopes and deer, so they can only chase small ostriches on the grassland."

"There are also smaller cheetahs who also like to eat rabbits. I always choose the food they like. This is very helpful for getting the animals close to you."

After finishing the food, Harley licked the blood at the bottom of the bowl with unsatisfied intention. Finally, he stuck out his tongue and licked a circle of beard, and paced repeatedly under Bifang's gaze.

Until a quarter of an hour later, he chose a position farthest away from Bifang and lay down, bathed in the morning light, and yawned several times.

Bi Fang smiled upon seeing this and said to the audience in the live broadcast room: "Actually, there is one thing you may not know, that is, among all wild cats, the cheetah may be the most loved one."

"If anyone in the live broadcast room is older, you may know that in the 1990s, many cubs were still roaming around in the Magic City Wildlife Park, including cheetahs."

Relatives?

After hearing this, the curiosity of the audience was immediately aroused.

【real or fake? 】

[What’s the point? 】

[Is it possible to live a life of one cheetah in each hand? 】

[When Lao Fang talked about the Magic City Zoo, I seemed to have some impression of it. I seemed to be in elementary school at the time and saw little cheetahs running around in the zoo. 】

[Holy shit, is it real or fake? Shouldn't this suck baldness? 】

[Isn’t this too happy? 】

[Unfortunately it’s not possible now. 】

【Careless】

"This is mainly due to two reasons. One is because cheetahs belong to the subfamily Felinae, and the other is because cheetahs have a social structure."

"Let's talk about the first point first."

Bi Fang directly imitated the appearance of a cheetah and sat cross-legged on the ground, lazily basking in the sun.

"Phylum, order, family, genus, species. Those who have studied biology should all know this recognized species classification, but this is only the most superficial classification. If you are a professional student of biology, you will know that among families and genera, there is another classification called Subfamily.”

"Subfamily is also the first level of biological taxonomy. Latin taxonomic names usually end in -inae, between family and genus, a family-level classification level secondary to family."

"A family can be further divided into several subfamilies, and each subfamily consists of a special genus within the family or several genera that are different from other attributes."

"The emergence of subfamilies is not meaningless. It can help us further distinguish some very different differences between animals."

"Just like the cat family, this is actually a quite large classification. Lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, clouded leopards, cheetahs, caracals, wild cats, and domestic cats all belong to the cat family."

"But Felidae is a large category, and there are two subfamilies under it, one is Felinae and the other is Leopardae. The difference between these two species is very big!"

"The most intuitive thing is that animals in the subfamily Felinae can retract and retract their claws, are generally small in size, and do not make roars, and there are 12 genera in total; animals in the subfamily Leopardinae have claws that cannot be retracted, are generally larger in size, and can emit roars, and there are 2 genera."

Bifang's biological classification successfully aroused the curiosity of the audience.

Lions, tigers, cougars, jaguars, these well-known hunters all have many superficial admirers, and they also know that these are the best in the cat family, but if they are further subdivided into the subfamily of felidae and the subfamily of pantherinae, it will seem like a muggle.

People don't know what the difference is, and what is the connection with the cheetah's closeness to humans.

What Bifang said next is the key point.

"Cheetah is actually a very special thing."

"Although its name contains the word leopard, it is not a real leopard. It does not belong to the Pantherinae, but is a member of the Felinae."

"Even in the early years, the cheetah genus was not counted in either family, and it formed a subfamily on its own, called the Cheetahinae."

"But now this subfamily has been cancelled, and the cheetah has been thrown into the Felinae. There are only two subfamilies left in the entire Felinae, so the cheetah is actually a real big cat, a real cat."

"What I said before was not nonsense. Even if we don't look at the combat power, from the perspective of genes and performance, the cheetah is really very close to the cat."

"And the real top predators like tigers and lions are all members of the Pantherinae. Do you understand the difference?"

[A little confused, but I understand it a little bit]

[It means that cheetahs and cats are one family, and tigers and lions are another family? ]

[Good guy, it's called a leopard but not a leopard. Isn't this fooling people? 】

"Almost the same, cheetahs and slender-waisted cats are genetically close, their calls are meow~meow~, their limbs are slender, and their weight is less than 50 kilograms."

"Leopards are real leopards, fierce, with a deep call, "Awooo Awooo", the kind of bass that cat lovers love the most, weighing 50-100kg, with thick legs and plum blossom-shaped patterns, like ancient copper coins, and are also called golden leopards."

"Cheetahs run fast, but they don't have an advantage in strength. Adults are not on their menu, so they are relatively They are relatively friendly to people, but of course they are not non-aggressive. Domestic cats can also scratch and bite people, and wild animals are even more aggressive. "

"Leopards are different. They run only half as fast as cheetahs, but they often bully cheetahs. They are overpowered and aggressive, and they are deadly to humans."

"Let me digress here. There is another animal with a very intimidating name that is also a big cat, and that is the puma."

"It is also a big cat, with a body size similar to that of a cheetah, and its fighting power is a little stronger, but it is limited."

"On the contrary, one of its names is The distant relative that looks a little less impressive than it is the Pantherinae, the Jaguar, which is the third largest cat in the world. "

"Of course, the Jaguar also has an alias that is not widely known, but it can still reflect some combat effectiveness and deterrence, called the Jaguar."

[Lion: It can't even beat the leopard, it's really embarrassing for my lion family (dog head)]

[I've learned a lot]

[Too detailed]

"Of course, my statement actually has some minor problems, but you really can't count on those beasts of the Pantherinae More friendly than cheetahs, tigers, lions, leopards, and jaguars are not easy to get along with, and a casual slap may kill you. "

"For cats with hunting instincts, it is difficult to restrain themselves from attacking and testing creatures weaker than themselves."

"And the things of the feline subfamily are generally small in size and have limited lethality. To put it bluntly, you don’t care if they are not friendly, and they don’t have any special thoughts about giants like humans."

[Heartbreaking]

[Speak more subtly]

[What about the second point?]

[Yes, there is a second point, tell me quickly.]

"The second point"

Bifang looked at the time and found that half an hour had passed, so he opened the chain, got out of the cage, and joked.

"Sorry, let's talk about the second point after the second meal today, otherwise what if my inventory is emptied by you in so many days?"

The audience was dumbfounded.

[Good guy, don't interrupt like this!]

[You have no martial ethics!!! 】

Fortunately, it only takes three hours to wait.

And this time, Bifang did not choose to turn off the live broadcast and then turn it on again. Instead, he fixed the drone on the wire mesh and pointed the camera at the cheetah Harley before walking away.

At nine o'clock in the morning, Bifang appeared in front of the camera again, continued to feed, and then sat directly in the cage to continue the morning topic.

"In the morning, I talked about the difference between the subfamily of cats and the subfamily of panthers. Now let's talk about the second reason, which is the sociality of cheetahs."

"Here I have to mention two representative creatures, one is the tiger and the other is the lion. The former is a well-known lone beast, and the latter is also a familiar social beast."

"Among the social animals domesticated by humans, there is a very good example, that is, the dog. The wolf should also be the most familiar social animal."

Dog, Bifang would like to call it the most successful animal domesticated by humans, no one else.

And the domestication of dogs is inseparable from the social nature of their ancestor, the wolf.

"Remember what I said about the necessary characteristics of animal domestication when I was taming Alpha?"

"Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel mentions at one point that the species must have a social structure, or hierarchy, that allows them to accept subordinate roles."

"Dogs are the earliest animals that humans have become familiar with. They are recognized as the first animals to be domesticated by humans, much earlier than other domestic animals. They are also the only animals that were domesticated by humans before the emergence of agriculture."

【I remember this】

[That is, for animals, humans become part of the group. 】

"In the process of wolves being domesticated into dogs, the most critical first step was taken by the wolves. They chose us first, not the other way around."

"Due to genetic mutations, the 'safe distance' maintained between some wolves and primitive humans has been shortened. These special wolves dare to approach the tribal camps of primitive humans in order to obtain food from the garbage dumps around the camp."

"In the beginning, there may be wolves following hunters to pick up some leftover food and bones. As a result, some wolves that seemed less threatening, especially their cubs, were adopted by people and reproduced, thus starting the process of domestication. ”

"In the life of primitive people, dogs could help people hunt and serve as sentinels, and dogs could also be protected by people. The most important thing is that they had a relatively stable source of food. As time went by, the temperaments of each generation became more and more mature. The docile wolf was selected by humans, and the dog was born from this two-way effort.”

[I know this. Just like humans and wheat, there is actually a view that wheat has tamed humans so that they can reproduce themselves all over the world]

【hiss! 】

【Like this? 】

[It’s a bit scary to think about it]

[It is originally a two-way choice. If everyone chooses each other, they can survive better. 】

"The pack structure of wolves is a very critical condition for domestication. The ancestors of dogs, the wolf pack has a clear hierarchy, and each wolf has a different status in the pack."

"Each wolf pack will have a leader, who is in charge of everything in the pack, including the distribution of food, the settlement of disputes, and even the reproduction of offspring."

"The alpha wolf still has supreme power, and the other wolves absolutely obey him and are content with their status in the pack."

"Although after a long period of evolution, modern wolves and modern dogs are no longer directly related, dogs still retain the social habits of wolves."

"But there is one difference. Dogs' social partners are no longer limited to their own kind, but have extended to the humans who raise them."

"This means that dogs have regarded each member of the family as a member of their own group, and dogs generally treat their owners as the alpha wolf, which allows humans to manage the animals and establish trust in them leadership relationships possible.”

Saying this, Bifang suddenly remembered something.

"Oh, there is one thing I think it is necessary to mention here, that is, in the dog world, kissing the cheek and mouth means submission, and the status of the kisser is often lower than that of the person receiving the kiss."

"You can give it a try and turn your cheek to the dog's side. You will find that it will come over and actively lick your face. This is how they express that you are the boss and a sign of submission."

"On the contrary, if you take the initiative to kiss it, you will find that the dog's expression is often confused."

"I have seen many people express their love by kissing their dogs. This is nothing in itself. It's okay if the owner thinks it's okay, but over time, it can easily make the dog feel that it is the boss."

"You will find that it is becoming more and more difficult to control, and its temper is getting more and more bad-tempered. Especially some large and fierce dogs. If they are taken outside, they will easily get into trouble and will not obey your commands, because in its view, you are the one who should be obedient. that."

"So even if you think kissing your dog is okay in itself, try to be prepared to avoid getting him into trouble."

【! ! ! 】

[Damn, why is my dog ​​becoming more and more disobedient! ! ! 】

【Dear dog. Don’t you feel dirty?】

【I can not understand. 】

[However, what does this have to do with lions and tigers? 】

"Because if you look at it from a social point of view, you will find that it is actually safer to raise lions than tigers."

"The same goes for cheetahs."

There's still a hundred to go to reach the one thousand mark. Let's get some monthly tickets.