Dr Magdalena Krajcarz and Prof. Daniel Makowiecki from the Institute of Archeology of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, together with Dr Danijela Popović and her team of from the University of Warsaw, will carry out the project “Five thousand years of the history of the domestic cat in Central Europe. Interdisciplinary paleogenetic and archeozoological study”.

The main goal of the research is to reconstruct the migration routes of domestic cats from the region of domestication to Europe and to search for traces of natural and human-controlled selection in the genome of cats.

Researchers also want to trace phenotypic and genetic changes in cats over time, corresponding to domestication (aesthetic: size, color, behavioral: reduction of aggressiveness, and physiological: adaptation to digest anthropogenic foods such as milk and starch). The project is financed by the National Science Center and will be implemented with researchers from Belgium, Serbia, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.