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Unlike dogs where you are part of their "pack", for cats you are their mother - seriously, your petting them is their mother licking their fur to clean it, and their purs help you realize that they are alive and well.
The odd part is that in the wild, the kitten doesn't stay with the mother all that long. So unlike dogs, we keep cats in a permanent juvenile state - that's why they don't (so much) "obey", bc they are confident in their special status of being loved by mother.
Dogs 100% were selectively bred to be permanently juvenile as well.
Dogs have extreme neonatal characteristics. They are basically forever-wolf-puppies.
Their heads are rounder, eyes bigger, proportions more exaggerated, more playful etc. etc.
And we actually know the main brain difference between wolves and dogs is that dogs don’t mature basically ever neurologically.
Wolves are in basically every way smarter than dogs.
We dumbed down wolves and made them babies forever.
Our biggest rivals for millennia.
We are… fucked up.
Anyways love puppies ❤️
There's a theory that we were able to evolve our big problem-solving brains because we got access to higher-quality protein after teaming up with dogs as hunting partners. So did we breed them to be pets or did they breed us to be caretakers?
I mean there were actually two “intelligence” explosions for humans, once as Homo Erectus like 2 million years ago. Then again as Homo Heidelbergensis ~ 700,000 years ago. So way before dogs.
As in we have evidence of H. Erectus with brains as big or even bigger than ours. And by the time of H. Heidelbergensis our brains stabilised around the size they are today.