Why is there overgrown cats, but not dogs?

Question

There is over grown potentially 600 pound cats, like tigers and lions etc, but no over grown dogs? Why cats, but not dogs?

Answer 1

It's to do with the way the two species have evolved.

All species have evolved their physicality to deal with their environmental needs in the optimum way.

Cats are solitary hunters (with the exception of most lions) and so need to be large enough to bring down the large sized prey in their environment. Even with lions, although they hunt in packs, they still need their size to bring down prey - large packs of lions can bring down elephants, which is not something a pack of the much smaller wolves could do. The earlier big cats like smilodon (sabre toothed cat) weren't actually very big - later versions evolved to be bigger and therefore more successful at hunting alone.

Wolves have evolved to use the numbers in their pack rather than their size to bring down prey.

Hope this helps!
Chalice

Answer 2

Lions, tigers, and other members of the big cat family are NOT overgrown house cats !!! They are separate species, and most of them are seriously endangered or threatened with extinction. As for dogs, there are many other wild members of the canine family- foxes, wolves, the Dingo dogs of Australia, the coyote, and so forth. These animals, while they may not weigh as much as the domestic dog ( which humans have bred for thousands of years to make what it is) are nonetheless fierce predators. Domestic dogs are the way they are because of people. Nature never really intended the dog to look like it so often does now. The world's first dogs were wolves. Does this answer your question?

Answer 3

Only because the size of the cats we domesticated are smaller than the dogs we domesticated is small in comparison to well-known wild species.

If, for instance, people did not domesticate wolves, but instead fennec foxes, wolves would seem overgrown.

Similarly, if humans domesticated tigers, other cats would seem tiny.

Its all relative. It just depends on what species we became familiar enough with to domesticate.

Answer 4

Cats usually are not as active as dogs.

Answer 5

First, I'd like you to name a relative of the dog that gets as big as a lion. =)