Are there more species of cats than dogs or more species of dogs than cats?

Question

I mean pet cats not wild cats.

Answer 1

There are 36 feline species and 162 dog species. So, there are lots more dogs.

Answer 2

You mean breeds, not species. All cats are the same species, as are all dogs.

There are many, many more breeds of dogs, and with much more variation. The heaviest mastiff can easily weigh 50 times as much as the smallest Chihuahua!

The reason for this is that cats have been used by humans in basically two ways, as pets, and as mousers, neither of which necessitates much variation to the basic model. Fancy cat breeding has not been done for that long, compared to dogs, and mostly to alter what are minor features, biologically speaking, such as coat color and length, etc.

Dogs, on the other hand, have been useful to humans for literally tens of thousands of years, in hundreds of different ways. Many, many hundreds of years of selective breeding, on all continents except Antarctica, has lead to a huge variety of dog types, suitable for all kinds of different things.

New "uses" keep being found for them, such as assistance dogs (not just for the blind, but for the deaf, or physically handicapped), health-sensor dogs (some dogs can sense oncoming epileptic seizures or insulin shock, and new research has shown that they may be able to sniff out certain types of cancer!), pet therapy dogs, etc. It's only a matter of time before new breeds are developed that specialize in these new jobs.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Do you mean breeds? Because this is different to species - there is only one species of pet cat (Felis catus) and one species of pet dog (canis familiaris). Labradors, doberman, boxers etc are all breeds.

I would think there are far more breeds of dog than there are cat. I can probably name over a hundred dog breeds, but cat breeds I can only name about 20 cat breeds. Remember dogs have been domesticated longer than cats, so there would be more breeds - and they're a lot more physically diverse than cat breeds which all look basically the same.

Chalice

Answer 4

It's been proved that there are more different breeds of dogs than cats, from what the species started with we now have 100's of different types of dog, but cats still stick to the same genetics. No one knows why the cats genetics haven't changed over the century's, I think its because you can't mess perfection.

Answer 5

There are over 200 breeds of domestic cats in the word and almost 70 million cats are presently living in American homes. Outdoor cats are excellent hunters and are known to stalk.pretty much anything that wiggles or fits in there mouth. ....However this does not include wild felines and recently rare/ extinct breeds.

Answer 6

There are more dogs than Cats.

Answer 7

Im pretty shure dogs have the most species or breeds

Answer 8

well, I guess dogs.