“You can’t see me!”
All members of Family Felidae are good at that game, but it’s also true that there are very few online images available of these two particularly elusive South American cats.
Don’t worry — I have found some good videos on both guiñas (the cat on the left, above) and Geoffroy cats (right) — two lookalikes who are also next-door neighbors in the wild.
We briefly met guiñas, also known as kodkods, back in April.
Per the Cat Specialist Group, guiñas aren’t actually tropic dwellers, but they are endangered and need all the attention they can get; they live in a rainforest (Valdivian); and for some evolutionary reason, guiñas look a lot like another small cat that makes its home in, among other places, the same temperate rainforests.
Most authorities in English that I’ve read call these cuties Geoffroy cats, but I can see why Animalogic went with this name:
Geoffroy who?
Now, here is a video about guiñas that, although it is in Spanish, has lots of amazing views of this very rare and extremely secretive little cat.
If you saw one of these small spotted cats in the wild, could you tell if it was a guiña or a Geoffroy cat? I wouldn’t be able to!
A little lagniappe:
Featured image: Guigña (left) by lyceon.cl via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0; Geoffroy cat (right) by Fedaro via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Flight To Wonder 