Talk:Blake Belladonna/@comment-25555436-20151013203456/@comment-4010415-20151013214100

Playing with their prey is not only fun, but it also tires out their prey enough where it will be easy to kill. Though, it may also be due to many house cats being well-fed by their owners. They still have the instincts that tell them to hunt, but they don't need to eat what they hunt, so instead, to fulfill that instinct, they just play with the creatures they catch.

Many dogs' hunting instincts are simplified to "chase things," so their instincts drive them to chase whatever they see quickly moving away from them. A lot of the stronger instincts in dogs are ones that humankind programmed into their breeds. The leftovers from wolves are generally in the more primitive breeds and the breeds that were programmed to use those wolf instincts. Border collies use the same "Circle the prey while staring intensely" technique as wolves, but they don't kill the sheep. Huskies have a pack mentality (which is needed, as their job is to work as a team. Whichever husky establishes itself as more dominant than the rest is the one you put as the leader of your sled team.), and they love to vocally communicate.

Though, of course, cats were domesticated much later than dogs, it wasn't that long ago as far as domestication is concerned, and they technically domesticated themselves when they decided that sharing territory with humans would be beneficial to them. Plus, the only work we ever put cats to is hunting, whereas the various breeds of dog all have different purposes (hunting, herding, retrieval, sled pulling, tracking, companionship, etc).