Interesting Observation

Being in a house-hold where we have a bunch of striped tigered cats, I made an interesting observation:



Look ABOVE the eyes. (You can also do the same research on Google if you look for pics of "striped kittens" etc...or if you own a striped cat yourself)

Do you see the "fake" eyes over the real eyes?

The weird thing is, I couldn't find anything in Google about that even if those "fake eyes" are VERY obvious to me. It is my theory that those fake eyes in the pattern of the stripes exist to "confuse" other, primitive animals (rodents, bugs etc..) so that those animals do not know when a cat is sleeping and has it's eyes closed. (If you have a better theory, let met know!)

You can get a better idea if you look at a sleeping striped cat and squint your eyes to simulate "bad eye-sight" which I assume a lower animal may have....so, in combination with the already confusing pattern and stripes such animals may see a cat as always "alert" even if it's sleeping in reality.


What has this to do with evolution? Or with "life" in general.

I think it's always interesting observing my cats and then ponder simple things, for example how does a single cell WITHIN A BLACK hair on a striped cat know that it must be black, while an adjacent hair will be light gray or white? The total pattern on the cat often to an astonishing extent resembles a spiral or a "galaxy". How does a single cell within ONE hair know about the entire fur pattern on the cat?

How do the cells in the fur for the "fake eyes" know how an eye looks like? Looking at the fake eyes its very obvious to me that the cells "know" about the general shape/size of an eye, the pupils etc.

It's just astonishing to realize this.

PS. Not sure where to put this, evolution/creation...metaphysics maybe. We are dealing with one still unsolved mystery of biology..that is that after the first (I think four) divisions of cells in an embryo each cell "knows" about it's function. A cell will not grow a finger on your face, or a nose wont grow on your foot, or a white hair won't grow in a part of fur which belongs to the "black part" of a pattern in fur etc.

The question here of course is how cells get this information.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


Cats are a product of artificial selection. They have been modified by us. Their characteristics have come about through a mixing of wild cat characteristics via selective breeding.

Perhaps a better example of what you are hinting at is mimicry. Eyes on the back of butterfly wings for example. This is brought about through natural selection - a butterfly with markings which slightly resemble eyes will stand a better chance of confusing and escaping predators and thus pass on it's genes and this trait to the next generation. There are many examples of this in the animal and plant world.

The cell itself does not 'know' anything. It's the genetics, cumulatively shaped by natural selection (or in the case of cats, artificial selection) which determines this and it is this which is passed to the next generations.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed

I think it's always interesting observing my cats and then ponder simple things, for example how does a single cell WITHIN A BLACK hair on a striped cat know that it must be black, while an adjacent hair will be light gray or white?

Hair doesn't have cells, it's primarily made of a protein called keratin. The middle layer of a strand of hair contains melanin, the amount and distribution of which gives hair its color.

That is very interesting OP. I never realized that they had eye like markings on their forehead. Now that you mention it it is so evident. I would bet that most people do not realize that they look like eyes. In plain sight and yet people can't see it.

It is probably something to either confuse the prey or to make other animals cross eyed so they are confused. I am sure there is a reason for this. It could also make it look like there may be two cats if something attacks them.

They remind me of someone with sunglasses raised up on their forehead

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


Whoa, I never noticed that before. S&F for pointing something out that's been right in front of people's faces. But like another poster above said, it's probably like when a caterpillar or butterfly have fake eyes. For the cat, if indeed those are/were fake eyes, it was probably to help keep the cat safe while it slept in the wild.

Cats

ReturnofTheSonOfNothing
reply to post by NoRulesAllowed

 

Cats are a product of artificial selection. They have been modified by us. Their characteristics have come about through a mixing of wild cat characteristics via selective breeding.

Perhaps a better example of what you are hinting at is mimicry. Eyes on the back of butterfly wings for example. This is brought about through natural selection - a butterfly with markings which slightly resemble eyes will stand a better chance of confusing and escaping predators and thus pass on it's genes and this trait to the next generation. There are many examples of this in the animal and plant world.

The cell itself does not 'know' anything. It's the genetics, cumulatively shaped by natural selection (or in the case of cats, artificial selection) which determines this and it is this which is passed to the next generations.

edit on RAmerica/Chicago31000000Mon, 14 Oct 2013 06:39:53 -050010-0500fCDT06 by ReturnofTheSonOfNothing because: (no reason given)

Notice how our artificial selection of cats has never produced anything other than a ... cat?

How is that? Shouldn't we have been able to breed a dog out of a cat through evolution? (Or some feline equivalent)

FreeMason

ReturnofTheSonOfNothing
reply to post by NoRulesAllowed

 

Cats are a product of artificial selection. They have been modified by us. Their characteristics have come about through a mixing of wild cat characteristics via selective breeding.

Perhaps a better example of what you are hinting at is mimicry. Eyes on the back of butterfly wings for example. This is brought about through natural selection - a butterfly with markings which slightly resemble eyes will stand a better chance of confusing and escaping predators and thus pass on it's genes and this trait to the next generation. There are many examples of this in the animal and plant world.

The cell itself does not 'know' anything. It's the genetics, cumulatively shaped by natural selection (or in the case of cats, artificial selection) which determines this and it is this which is passed to the next generations.

edit on RAmerica/Chicago31000000Mon, 14 Oct 2013 06:39:53 -050010-0500fCDT06 by ReturnofTheSonOfNothing because: (no reason given)

Notice how our artificial selection of cats has never produced anything other than a ... cat?

How is that? Shouldn't we have been able to breed a dog out of a cat through evolution? (Or some feline equivalent)

Nature has the advantage of eons of time.

Which is a great point really - if we can achieve over a few thousand years the amazing diversity found in cats, dogs, geraniums and orchids via artificial selection, imagine what natural selection, operating over billions of years can achieve.

The answer is the beauty and diversity of everything we see around us...