Alternate Evolution - Cat into pointy-eared humanoid - 1

The idea for the Named began not with a story, but with a sketch. I like to work back and forth between images and written words. In my early 20's, in the mid-to late 1970's, I did a drawing to explore how a pointy-eared alien (such as Star Trek's Vulcans) could arise from a feline ancestor. I was and still am, an unabashed fan of the original and later TV series and movies. Some fans speculated that the Vulcans descended not from anthropoid ancestors, as we humans evidently have, but from a felinoid species. That, said the authors of this theory would explain many Vulcan characteristics. Not only the pointed ears, but enormous strength, graceful movement, going into heat(!), the raised third eyelid, the ferocity barely checked by logic, etc. etc.

So I scribbled and erased, (and probably smudged) my way through many stages of possible development. Unfortunately life tends to gobble up many things, and that drawing did not survive the many moves and career changes I went through. It may yet be hiding in a misplaced box or portfolio, however I decided to re-create it. Shown in the accompanying image are the first three stages of such a projected fictional evolution. The first is the four-footed feline founder of the line, a creature similar to the big cats of our planet. I didn't model it directly on any particular species, so it is somewhat generic as well as fairly quick to draw. I may go back and think a little harder about the concept and re-do the first creature sketch, but it serves for now.

The second stage is intriguing. It invokes the idea of neoteny ('neo' meaning new, and 'teny' which means holding onto), which is the retention of infant or juvenile characteristics into adulthood. You see this in adult dogs, which retain the floppier ears, shorter faces, domed skulls, playful behavior, docility, and other traits seen in wolf puppies but not adult wolves. Humans biologically engineered certain canids by selecting puppies that kept their “puppiness” as they grew. Some small dog breeds carry neoteny to an extreme, with the tiny adult physiques, large heads, bulging eyes and pushed-in faces more characteristic of newborns than adults.

This has not happened as much with cats, although the pushed-in face of the pure-bred “pig-faced” Persian may have elements of neotenic development. This process has fashioned many domestic and wild species including our own.

There is evidence that the high forehead, short domed skull and smooth brow of Homo sapiens sapiens may have originated from the infantile characteristics of more beetle-browed, long-headed ancestor. Infant and child skeletons of Neanderthal (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and other related types show that these hominid infants had domed skulls and high foreheads at birth. As the individual grew up, the skull lengthened, brow ridges developed and forehead sloped back. Children who, for some reason retained the more juvenile head structure into adulthood may have been our progenitors.
(It is not thought now that Neanderthals were our direct ancestors, but other hominid types show similar developmental traits, and the “missing link” to us certainly lay among them.

So, this second stage of feline-based evolution shows a creature with a smaller more kitten- or cub-like face, having retained the juvenile form derived from neotenization (retaining early-life structures into adulthood). The changing ratio of face to skull (for whatever reason) is lifting the limits on brain development, as it did in primates and hominids. Whether the enlarging brain pushed cranial skull development or the skull enlarged for another reason and just happened to facilitate brain growth, we haven't yet established.


Although the drawing shows the face only, I have assumed that the overall proportions of head to body are also changing, the head becoming larger in relation to the rest.

The third stage shows the feline-derived equivalent of an early primate such as a lemur. It still retains portions of its origin, most notably in the ear structure, the feline splitting of the face by a line that separates the whisker-pads, and in the teeth, which show a more carnivorous capability as opposed to the modern lemur's insect-eating dental arrangement.

For those who are curious, Larry Gonick has an interesting graphical presentation of the hominid neoteny theory in his comic book, The Evolution of Everything. That is where I first saw it, but he also gives scholarly references.

CB