The Tribe of Tiger [Paperback]

From the plains of Africa to her very own backyard, noted author and anthropologist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas explores the world of cats, both large and small in this classic bestseller. Inspired by her own feline's instinct to hunt and supported by her studies abroad, Thomas examines the life actions, as well as the similarities and differences of these majestic creatures. Lions, tigers, pumas and housecats: Her observations shed light on their social lives, thought processes, eating habits, and communication techniques, and reveal how they survive and coexist with each other and with humans.Chapter One

The story of cats is a story of meat, and begins with the end of the dinosaurs. Before their mysterious disappearance, the dinosaurs had reached a sort of climax in the art of meat-eating, which had begun simply enough, almost with life itself, when the early swarms of small aquatic creatures had little else to eat except one another. For these early swimmers, plants as we know them were not an option, since plants had not evolved. As life became more complicated, hunting and meat-eating became more complicated too. Most of the vertebrates were meat-eaters -- certainly most of the fish ate other fish, as did the first amphibians, who in turn became food for the emerging reptiles.

During Permian and Triassic times, predatory dinosaurs crowded out most of their meat-eating forebears, ending the long reign of the big carnivorous amphibians. From Jurassic times onward even the largest dinosaurs had predatory dinosaurs trying to kill them, with more dinosaurs waiting to scavenge the remains. The mammals had no chance to mount any kind of challenge. As a result, when after 130 million years of highly successful predation the dinosaurs vanished, they left behind a most unusual situation -- a world newly free of carnivores of any appreciable size.

Even as recently as the Paleocene, sixty-five million years ago, only two groups of mammals could halÃu