Tabby cat, tabby cat, why are you so different?
Tabby cat, tabby cat, why are you so different?
European wildcats have an endangered status in most countries across the continent. Not only’ordinary’ factors threaten them such as habitat-degradation, and road accidents, but also the widespread hybridization with their domesticated cousins adds to the sad prediction about the fate of the ’pureblood’ wildcats. It is no surprise that the percentage of hybrid cats is considerably high in the wilderness, when free-roaming owned, and feralized domestic cats, can enter wildcat habitats almost anywhere.
The occurrence of hybrid cats in the wild has been profoundly investigated for decades. However, seemingly nobody realized that the ’coin may have two sides’, and wildcat genes may also enter the population of household cats. Consider the following scenario: a ’one night stand’ at the edge of the forest, where the female in heat is a domestic cat who just visited the natural habitat of a wildcat male… This rendezvous could result in kittens born at the owner’s home, where the juvenile cats are going to have a chance to enter the world of unsuspecting cat-lovers. In their newly published paper, researchers at the Department of Ethology (Péter Pongrácz and his students, Csenge Lugosi and Petra Anett Kovács) in cooperation with Professor József Lanszki from the HUN-REN Limnological Research Institute, investigated whether one could detect hybrid-looking and oddly behaving individuals among the Hungarian pet cat population. Their questionnaire was completed by more than 700 participants, who described their cats’ look and behavior. Importantly, the cat owners submitted photographs of more than 400 cats. The researchers evaluated these pictures according to the method of Scottish wildcat researchers, scoring the wildcat-looking details of the feline pets on the photos.
Surprisingly, the hybrid-looking cats represented almost 20% of the sample. Even more interesting was that according to the owners’ description, the hybrid-looking cats behaved markedly differently than the ’pure’ domestic looking cats. They were described as the most independent cats by their owners, and remarkably, these cats did not use the ’tail-up’ greeting towards other cats. At the same time, they still greeted their owners with upheld tail. When all the cats were divided into ’tabby’ and ’non-tabby’ categories, the tabbies’ behavior showed more wildcat-like characteristics compared to the non-tabbies. With the exception of their owner, tabbies were more grumpy with other people, they roamed more, and fiercely protected their food. Importantly, the housing conditions did not differ in the case of hybrid-looking and typical domestic cats. The hybrid-looking animals occurred throughout the country, and not only in towns near wildcat-habitats.
Until the DNA-analysis of the surveyed cats is ready, we cannot state for sure that the cats in this study with odd behaviors and wildcat-resembling morphologies, would be confirmed hybrids of wild- and domestic cats. However, the signs point to the same direction. According the results, the lack of tail-ups toward other cats is especially curious. Tail-up greeting is considered to be the result of domestication in adult cats, as wildcats only show this type of greeting towards their mother while they are still kittens. Adult domestic cats on the other hand greet with tail-ups other friendly cats, humans and even dogs in the family. Based on these new results, one can probably discover new, intriguing aspects of the ’ordinary’ tabby cats around us, or maybe even on the sofa!
Original study:
Pongrácz P., Lugosi C.A., Kovács P.A., Lanszki J. 2025. Cats go wild while staying at home: first indication and behavioral assessment of potential European wildcat-hybrids living as companion animals. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 06806, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2025.106806