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My Adopted Cat Is The Best Climbing Partner Ever

Most pet cats will become timid or defensive when outdoors, but not Millie – after being adopted by her mountain-climbing owner Craig Armstrong, Millie has become a feline hiking and mountain-climbing legend.

“She literally loves to climb things… if there’s high-ground she’ll seek it out,” Armstrong said in an interview with Bored Panda. He had nothing but praise for the tenacious little athlete: “Generally she does best on slabby routes where she can scramble from ledge to ledge. She’s an incredible athlete but steep juggy routes just aren’t her thing. When bouldering, though, she’s done some pretty amazing gaps and dynos.”

“I go on a lot of weekend climbing adventures. It never seemed odd to me, just seemed like something I’d do with my pet, take her places,” explained Armstrong. Ever since Millie climbed up onto his shoulder at the Furburbia adoption center in Utah, Armstrong knew they’d make a good team.

There are, of course, pros and cons to taking your cat hiking – “We camp in my truck; She peed in there one night, but she caught a mouse in there one night, too.” Armstrong hopes that they can become a team in other aspects of his life as well; “I’m still waiting for the day we come across a group of pretty ladies and they love Millie and invite us to their campfire that night.“

He also had plenty of advice for owners who might consider hiking with their own cats. “Get them used to their name and to you as a safe place. In talus fields or thick woods she’ll get distracted and climb trees or explore tiny caves and under boulders and stop following sometimes. It’s taken a lot of practice and many trips to get Millie to the point where she follows me down a trail past areas like thickets that would have distracted her otherwise.”

Via Bored Panda

if I could have only one thing in life….

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The ancient ancestor of the modern domestic dog is the wild wolf of the pre-LGM (Last Glacial Maximum: ca 26,000–19,000 years BP). Until recently, the earliest well-preserved and well-documented remains of early domestic dog all came from European contexts dating to no earlier than ca 14,000–9,000 years ago. Recent research, however, has provided a canine skull from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Goyet (Belgium) with a direct age (that is, an date made on the skull itself rather than on artefacts found with the skeleton) of ca 36,000 cal. BP. This skull, however, has physical traits which do not allow for a clear determination of whether this particular animal represents the remains of a very early domesticated dog or a completely wild wolf. More certain, is the well-preserved remains of a ‘dog-like canid’ from Razboinichya Cave (Altai Mountains, Siberia). These remains are dated to ca 33,000 cal. BP, and most interestingly, seem to represent a group of dogs which were in the process of being domesticated by the local people before climatic and cultural changes associated with the LGM disrupted their transformation into domesticated animals. Consequently, this particular line of dogs does not have any direct domesticated ancestors.

This data, along with other lines of evidence, demonstrates that dog domestication was a multi-regional process—that is, groups of people in various areas domesticated their local dog populations creating their own domestic breeds, rather than a single group of dogs being domesticated on one occasion by one group of people, and then these animals being transported around the globe. In the Australian context, we have the now-native dingo which was transported here from East Asia by Indigenous Australians around 5000 years ago.

http://www.australianarchaeology.com/2013/07/the-archaeology-of-a-humans-best-friend-dogs-and-people-in-prehistory/

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