On the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, domestic cats have gotten some genes from wildcats. Wild Chinese mountain cats aren’t the ancestors of domestic cats, but the two types of felines still swap genes. The wildcats’ DNA is inscribed on the genes of some pet cats living on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, but the mixing of genetic material extends back only a couple dozen generations. Cats and humans have lived together in China for at least 5,300 years, yet previous genetic studies on feline domestication hadn’t included DNA from East Asian cats. So researchers wondered whether the mountain cats (Felis silvestris bieti or Felis bieti) had ever contributed to Chinese pets’ genes. But the short length of time mountain cats and housecats have been mating suggests Chinese domestic cats have their origins elsewhere, probably in the Middle East . Analysis showed that the pet cats’ DNA carried traces of mountain cat genetics up to 30 generations ago. The reason is “actually quite apparent, but nobody thought about it before. Domestic cats arrived on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in the 1950s, most likely brought there by Han Chinese migrants. Census data show human population spikes in the region 70 years ago, coinciding with the earliest signs of hybridization of the wild and domestic cats. Pet cats’ Y chromosomes hold clues about these encounters, carrying genes that can enter the gene pool only through mountain cat fathers. Male Chinese mountain cats seem to sneak into villages and mate with female housecats, not the other way around. In Scotland, the genetic distinctiveness of European wildcats has been nearly wiped out by breeding with feral cats. With more DNA samples, future work may reveal genes are already flowing both ways. Modern interbreeding could threaten Chinese mountain cat conservation in the long run. Domestic cats’ genes could dilute or override traits that make mountain cats well adapted to high altitudes.

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