some people say that cats aren't wild that they are completely domesticated because they live
indoors so they need different food they need an indoor formula food but compared to dogs cats have
only been domesticated for a very short minute hey friends it's jess and jericho and i included
studies and everything that i'm talking about in the description below so you can take a look at
those afterwards and read about it but it's very interesting so a group of scientists have traced
back the domestication routes of our furry feline friends by analyzing the dna of ancient felines
it concluded that they descended from a middle eastern wild cat also known as felis silvestris
which is interesting kind of feline and sylvester and they think this started around 7,500 years ago
in the near east when people started building communities in the fertile crescent so humans
started farming they had crops and those crops brought rodents and other pests and those rodents
and other pests brought the cats so this was a nice symbiotic relationship the humans were like
cool free pest control and the cats were like cool easy dinner and egyptians kind of made having a
cat a fad and that led to the second wave of domestication all across europe and at this
point sailors were already bringing cats onto their ships again for the free pest control so
essentially cats domesticated themselves because they liked the free dinner and humans liked the
free pest control and another group of researchers wanted to figure out what is the ideal diet what
is the evolutionary diet of cats because we technically don't really know unless we're
surveying them 24/7. you know the cats in their natural habitat their free living free roaming
they have free choice to what they eat and in modern times we can get to know what their
diet is like by studying the contents of their stomach but fossils of you know older cat remains
don't still have the food left in their stomach so these researchers studied the stable isotopes
of carbon and nitrogen both of which are found in bone collagen and bone collagen
can survive through burial and fossilization so the scientists found a little bit in cats but
not as much compared to humans and dogs and other animals that are eating higher amounts of grains
but since they were finding a little bit in it inside the cats they concluded that the cats were
eating animals that consumed a high grain diet so things like rodents voles birds all of that
so the scientists concluded that cats have kind of a synanthrope opportunistic hunting ability
meaning that they rely on humans for food but not directly relying on the human food scraps
they rely on the human food scraps to attract rodents and other animals that the cat eats
so they aren't eating the human food scraps they're eating the pests that the human food
scraps attract so they concluded that cats are obligate carnivores and they choose to eat whole
prey rodents birds rabbits insects eggs you know reptiles depending on where they live
but those are the main prey that they eat so now let's talk about the difference between
the cat's natural diet whole prey and the most popular pet food kibble so right off the bat the
number one difference is the moisture content whole prey is around 70 to 80 percent moisture
all mammals are about 70 to 80 percent moisture and kibble is only 10% moisture
since cats have evolved eating a high moisture diet they naturally have a lower thirst drive
so right there just by moisture basis alone kibble is not appropriate for cats because you go from 70
to 80% moisture down to 10% moisture and i know i hear you saying my cat drinks plenty of water
but the average cat that eats dry food only would have to consume over 8 ounces of water
every single day just to stay hydrated i explain all this in a separate video i'll put that in
the top right corner and in the description below the next major difference is the ingredients when
we compare whole prey to kibble so whole prey is muscle meat organs and bones as well as skin blood
connective tissue fur feathers and it's roughly around two percent carbs on a dry matter basis
mainly coming from the stomach contents of prey since cats eat mainly herbivores there's going to
be a little bit of plant material in the stomach of prey kibble on the other hand the average
is 33% carbohydrates on a dry matter basis and i've even see it as high as 49% and these starchy
and carbohydrate-rich ingredients are required in kibble because it's cooked and pressurized
and the starchy ingredients hold all the other ingredients together and that's what gives you
that kibble shape if there were no starches and carbs all of the ingredients would just fall apart
a lot of kibble is also very low in meat based protein and if you don't understand aafco
guidelines their product name rules that you won't really understand this so just real quick as a
reference the product name rules tell us how much of the highlighted ingredient is actually in the
product so for example if you have chicken dinner that word dinner means there's between 25 and 94.9
percent chicken but if you have a product that says with chicken that minimum requirement goes
down to three percent chicken and it's less than 25% because if it was more than 25% the product
would say chicken dinner further chicken flavor the minimum requirement of chicken goes down to
zero percent and it's less than three percent because of the with rule now i hear you saying
but byproducts are in cat food and byproducts are organs and bones and aren't those super nutritious
that's included in whole prey yeah in an ideal world byproducts would mean organs and bones but
aafco also states that byproducts are essentially leftovers from the human food production industry
now i can go to my grocery store and get pigtails and pig feet and cow tongue and kidney and liver
and gizzards so what kind of leftovers of organs and bones are actually going in cat food if i can
buy all of those organs and bones fit for human consumption at my grocery store and again with
kibble it's cooked and pressurized then it goes into the bag and then it goes to the store and
then it's sitting on the shelf who knows how long before you actually buy it whereas with whole prey
mainly cats hunt and catch them kill their prey and then they eat it fresh so what's the solution
well the solution is to feed as close as possible to the evolutionary diet minimal processing
minimal synthetic supplementation you know of course supplements are necessary to fill in
nutritional gaps but we shouldn't rely on a you know ingredients list of 62 added supplements you
know the main nutrition should come from fresh meat organs and bones and you can check out
this playlist right over meow for everything that you need to know to get your picky cat
from whatever he's eating now to the best that you can for your situation thanks for watching