How did they figure out that ‘big cats’ (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) were actually related to normal-sized cats?

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DNA testing is relatively new so I assume it wasn’t that. Did some scientists just go out into the wild and observe lions behaving like cats and think to themselves “I bet they’re related!”, or did they have some other way of figuring it out?

**EDIT:** By the sounds of things they just looked at them and guessed. Luckily they guessed right! Can you imagine if we’d spent all this time calling them ‘big cats’ only to have DNA evidence prove that they’re completely unrelated? 😂

In: Biology

18 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

For one: come on it’s obvious. And it was obvious to scholars in the past, too. They analyzed what was available clearly to help them classify lifeforms. Just as how they tried to identify tiger subspecies by looking at skull shapes and stripe patterns. Note that it’s not a perfect process, and like all science, it’s a constant search for truth.

For two: recently they just study the genetics. It’s more accurate, but difficult. And it’s not perfect either

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