If you're of the belief that Hollywood's Cats & Dogs didn't offer a clear enough victor in the age-old "cats vs. dogs" debate, don't worry. Science is here with an answer of its own. 
 
 A new study published in PNAS reveals that, when taking history and science into it or whatever, cats have proven to be the more successful species over time. 
 
 See also: Portraits of aging dogs will tug at your heart strings 
 
 According to the study, an analysis of more than 2,000 fossils revealed that prehistoric cats and dogs competed for food, and cats won. Cats, being the better predators, at least partially caused the extinction of 40 different canine species. 
 
 The canine species we know today (wolves, foxes and their relatives) survived the competition, which is maybe why they're sooooo much cooler than cats (Editor's Note: This is the author's opinion, but it is true, so whatever). 
 
 "We usually expect climate changes to play an overwhelming role in the evolution of biodiversity. Instead, competition among different carnivore species proved to be even more important for canids," the study's leading author said in a statement. 
 
 The study also revealed that, contrary to the effect cats had on dogs, prehistoric canines had little impact on the survival of cat species. 
 
 Let's just see what happens in the next few thousand years before we make too quick a judgment on this one, okay? ||||| It may not surprise the average cat owner, but a team of researchers has discovered that the genome of domestic mousers differs only slightly from that of wildcats. 
 
 In other words, after 9,000-odd years of living alongside humans, the house cat remains only semi-domesticated, according to a report published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
 
 After comparing the genome of an Abyssinian cat named Cinnamon with those of humans, tigers, cows, dogs and another cat breed known as the Birman, the scientists found that cats retain many of the hunting, sensory and digestive traits of their wild kin. 
 
 Researchers did find a signal for human influence on cat evolution, however, in fur color and pattern, as well as a set of genes that are thought to be associated with tameness. 
 
 “We believe we have created the first preliminary evidence that depicts domestic cats as not that far removed from wildcat populations,” said senior author Wes Warren, an associate professor of genomics at the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. 
 
 The discovery that as few as 13 genes may separate domestic cats from their wild ancestors was a “genuinely important” advance, according to John Bradshaw, an anthrozoologist at the University of Bristol School of Veterinary Sciences in Britain, who was not involved in the research. 
 
 “This can only be the beginning of what will surely lead to a revolution in cat breeding,” Bradshaw wrote. 
 
 By pinpointing genes responsible for cat behavior and temperament, humans could more easily guide more changes in the animal. 
 
 “The potential is there to finally guide the cat through the remaining stage of domestication, not only producing cats that are better adapted to the demands of 21st century living, but at the same time enhancing their well being,” Bradshaw wrote. 
 
 Unlike dogs, which some researchers say began their association with humans roughly 30,000 years ago, archaeological evidence suggests that cats first entered our living space when we began to grow crops, about 10,000 years ago. 
 
 Researchers hypothesize that early farmers welcomed the felines because they hunted grain-eating rodents. Farmers rewarded the efficient rodent-slayers with extra food, researchers say. 
 
 Yet it's only in the last 200 years that humans have placed intense selection pressure on cats, producing up to 40 different breeds, Warren said. 
 
 Warren and his colleagues said that this relatively short period of breeding was partly responsible for the modest influence domestication has had so far on the evolution of Felis silvestris catus. However, it wasn't the only reason. 
 
 “Most importantly, some continue to interbreed with wildcat populations,” Warren said. 
 
 When examining the cat's genetic makeup, the researchers found that the animals retained qualities of wild hypercarnivores — hunters that eat meat almost exclusively. 
 
 “Carnivores are endowed with extremely acute sensory adaptations, allowing them to effectively locate potential prey before being discovered,” the authors wrote. “Within carnivores, cats have the broadest hearing range, allowing them to detect both ultrasonic communication by prey as well as their movement.” 
 
 In addition to retaining visual acuity that enables them to hunt in low-light conditions, cats are also able to metabolize high-protein, high-fat diets. 
 
 “Cats fed a diet rich in saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids showed no effects on plasma lipid concentrations that in humans are risk factors for coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis,” the authors wrote. 
 
 Researchers have hypothesized that the cat's peculiar, meat-intensive diet is one of the reasons it has existed on the edge of domestication. Dogs can be kept and bred on a vegetarian diet, which is much more difficult with cats. 
 
 Prior to the development of nutritionally sustaining pet foods, cats most likely had to rely on their hunting skills to obtain sufficient meat. 
 
 Though breeding of cats has focused mostly on controlling hair color and pattern, the authors identified gene changes that some researchers say are associated with the “domestication syndrome hypothesis.” 
 
 That hypothesis argues that when animals are bred for domestication, changes occur in a group of embryonic stem cells called the neural crest. These changes can result in diminished fearfulness and other qualities that appeal to humans. The hypothesis has yet to be proved experimentally, however. 
 
 “Our results suggest that selection for docility, as a result of becoming accustomed to humans for food rewards, was most likely the major force that altered the first domesticated cat genomes,” authors wrote. 
 
 Today, it's believed that there are as many as 600 million cats worldwide. 
 
 Follow @montemorin for science news ||||| When it comes to evolutionary debates, this one is a major dogfight. 
 
 Since the time of Charles Darwin, scientists have argued over the origin of domesticated dogs, speculating wildly about how, when and where a toothy, flesh-eating beast was first transformed into man’s best friend. 
 
 Some experts believe humans were naturally drawn to small, furry wolf pups, and seized them as novelties. Others suggest they were raised for slaughter by early agrarian societies. 
 
 Yet another theory holds that early proto-dogs were enlisted as helpers by roving bands of hunters, long before humankind ever experimented with agricultural livestock. 
 
 “The experts get quite exercised about who’s right and who’s wrong,” said James Serpell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. “Whether that’s just scientific hubris, I don’t know.” 
 
 But the epic argument over what sparked the Big Bark may finally be drawing to a close. As researchers avail themselves of faster and cheaper DNA sequencing technology, experts are zeroing in on the time and place where dogs were welcomed into human society. 
 
 PHOTOS: How wolves became dogs 
 
 In research published Thursday in the journal Science, evolutionary biologists analyzed the mitochondrial genomes of 18 ancient dogs and wolves. Then they compared them to an array of modern counterparts, and even a few coyotes. 
 
 The authors concluded that dog domestication most likely occurred in Ice Age Europe, between 18,800 and 32,100 years ago -- much earlier, and much farther north, than previously believed. 
 
 Dogs, the authors argued, evolved from a now extinct species of European wolf that followed bands of nomadic or semi-nomadic humans who were hunting woolly mammoths and other large prey. 
 
 Initially, the wolves sought out the carcasses and scraps of meat left behind by man, the authors suggest. Over time, these hang-around wolves began to fill a special role in human hunter-gatherer society, researchers say. 
 
 “The initial interactions were probably at arm’s length, as these were large, aggressive carnivores,” said senior study author Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biology professor at UCLA. “Eventually though, wolves entered the human niche. ... Maybe they even assisted humans in locating prey, or deterred other carnivores from interfering with the hunting activities of humans.” 
 
 From Europe, domesticated dogs spread across the Old World, and then to the Americas. However, the robust European wolf that got the fetch ball rolling left no other living descendants besides dogs. 
 
 “Wolves living on the planet today are not the closest group to the ancestor of dogs,” Wayne said. 
 
 Until recently, many archaeologists and biologists believed that dogs were first domesticated no more than 13,000 years ago, either in East Asia or the Middle East. A burial site in Israel contained the 12,000-year-old remains of an elderly man cradling a puppy. Archaeologists pointed to this find, as well as others, as evidence of a special, ancient bond between dogs and humans. 
 
 Yet tracing the exact path of dog evolution has been extremely difficult. Ancient dog remains are hard to distinguish from wolf remains, and frequent interbreeding between dogs and wolves further complicate matters. Add to that mankind’s zealous breeding of the animals to enhance specific traits and behaviors and the genetic waters become very clouded. 
 
 In fact, Darwin himself believed that the dizzying variety of existing dog breeds argued strongly that dogs must have had more than one wild ancestor. Genetic researchers today say this is most likely not the case, and that domesticated dogs evolved from one ancestor, in one region. 
 
 “On some levels, understanding the geographic origins of dogs is definitely more difficult than studying humans,” said Greger Larson, a bioarchaelogist at the University of Durham in England. 
 
 Larson, who was not involved in the Science paper, said Wayne and his colleagues had “significantly advanced” the debate over domestication.“I really like this paper,” Larson said. “Dogs have always been hard to pin down, and there have always been crazy ideas about the process and the location. But the emergence of genetic methods ... has elevated the level of discourse.” 
 
 There are those, however, who argue that Wayne and his colleagues are barking up the wrong genetic tree. 
 
 Peter Savolainen, an associate professor of evolutionary genetics at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, argues that evidence shows dogs were first domesticated in China, probably as a source of food. 
 
 Savolainen points out that Wayne and his colleagues published an earlier paper citing the Middle East as the origin of domestic dogs, but have abandoned that view. 
 
 “They don’t comment on that in this paper and they should,” Savolainen said. 
 
 He pointed out too that the paper lacks animal samples from the Middle East or China. 
 
 “The only thing you’re looking at is European and Russian samples,” he said. “What can you tell really about anything? If you only have European samples, obviously you will find that Europe is the origin.” 
 
 Wayne said he and his colleagues did not include samples from those areas because they were too recent, only about 7,000 or 8,000 years old. “That’s well after dogs were domesticated, so we’re kind of limited in that sense,” he said. 
 
 As for the turnabout on the Middle East hypothesis, Wayne said it was based on new genetic evidence and the realization that domesticated dogs interbreed with local wolf populations, confusing the genetic signal. 
 
 “Initially, we didn’t appreciate how important that early admixture was,” Wayne said. 
 
 Study authors said they hope to confirm their findings with additional testing of genetic material. This new DNA will be taken from the nucleus of ancient cells, which contain abundantly more information than DNA taken from cell mitochondria. 
 
 In the meantime, experts are left to ponder this latest development, as well as the reason why scientists have argued so heatedly about the origin of dogs. 
 
 “You might as well ask why,” Serpell said with a laugh. “People make up tremendously elaborate stories about the origin of our own species based on a few fossil remains here and there, or DNA from this individual or that individual. I guess we’re doing the same thing now to our dogs. ” 
 
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– It's official: Cats are better than dogs. Better predators, that is. So say researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences after looking at more than 2,000 fossils of prehistoric cats and dogs in North America. It turns out that when cats arrived on the continent 20 million years ago, which was about 20 million years after prehistoric canines started to call it home, cats were more successful hunters and helped cause the extinction of 40 species of canines vying for the same foods, reports the Telegraph. "We usually expect climate changes to play an overwhelming role in the evolution of biodiversity. Instead, competition among different carnivore species proved to be even more important for canids," writes the lead researcher. "These results imply that competition among entire clades, generally considered a rare process, can play a more substantial role than climate change and body size evolution in determining the sequential rise and decline of clades," the researchers write. In fact, the canine species that survived that competition are the early ancestors of those alive today, including wolves, foxes, jackals, and of course dogs, reports Mashable. What's more, unlike the calamitous effect cats had on dogs, prehistoric canines had little discernible impact on the course of cat species. (See what the world's oldest cat enjoyed on his 26th birthday recently.)