4. Tigers are the biggest wild cats, BUT…
…it all comes down to individuals. As you can see in this excerpt from my eBook on the big cats, using sources that are also included in the list at the end of this chapter, tigers and lions come in many sizes:
- Weight: Tiger: 165 to 716 pounds. Lion: 243 to 600 pounds.
- Height at shoulder: Tiger: 2.3 to 4 feet. African lion: 3 to 4 feet.
- Body length: Tiger: 5 to 7.6 feet. Lions: 4.5 to 8.2 feet.
- Tail length: Tiger: 3 to 3.6 feet. Lions: 2 to 3.3 feet.
There’s no doubt that the world record will always belong to individual Bengal and Amur tigers (who are also known as Siberian tigers).
However, no 165-pound tropical tiger stands a chance against Leo the Behemoth, and African lions can look any tiger in the eye — not that they do these days, outside of a zoo or as a result of other human interventions.
Those cats own the tropical savannas of Africa, while wild tigers have only been found in Asia.
Biologists aren’t sure why tigers never migrated into Africa as lions did when land bridges formed between Eurasia and Africa, starting about 19 million yeas ago.
It probably happened several times in various places during the Pleistocene epoch, but today the only possible site for a wild tiger-lion matchup would be the Gir forest preserve in western India, where a few Asiatic lions are holding on.
Don’t buy a ringside ticket for this fight just yet. Tigers disappeared from the Gir region many, many years ago and a sighting of one there now is rare.
In any case, it would be a Bengal tiger, and the wisest move for the smaller Asiatic lion probably would be to get very preoccupied with minding its own business.
5. Three species could be called the world’s smallest cat.
Interestingly, each one lives on a different continent. Could these mighty mites be secret power players?
Probably not. In Africa, for example, the black-footed cat has the smallest range of any African cat. Its ferociousness, though, along with its habit of digging dens in uninhabited termite mounds has earned it the name of “anthill tiger.”
Since there is a Cat Specialist Group web page for each of these little cats, loaded with information and pictures, included in the end references, I will just list some vital statistics of all three squee-cats here:
Black-footed cat (Africa):
- Weight: From 2 to a little over 5 pounds.
- Height at the shoulder: Less than 10 inches.
- Body length: 15 to 21 inches.
- Tail length: 6 to 8 inches.
Guiña, a/k/a kodkod (South America):
- Weight: 3 to 7 pounds.
- Height at the shoulder: 9 inches.
- Body length: 15 to 22 inches.
- Tail length: 8 to 10 inches.
Rusty-spotted cat (Asia)
Note: This is the cat most often given “world’s smallest” status by online sources. The BBC did a gorgeous video on Rusty, but I think they used a kitten instead of a full-grown adult.
- Weight: 2 to 4 pounds.
- Body length: 14 to 19 inches. (I couldn’t find a reliable source for height.)
- Tail length: 8 to 10 inches.
A large lion could step on one of these little cats and never know it — unless the “anthill tiger,” in one last burst of fury, went for the lion’s throat.
6. No one really knows what the world’s rarest cat is.
“Rare” and “endangered” aren’t necessarily the same thing.
The UK-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains a Red List of animals, plants, and fungi that are at risk of global extinction. There are Regional Red Lists, too.
Sadly, most cats except Fluffy are on this global endangered list, ranging from “Least Concern” (like southern Asia’s jungle cat — a small wild kitty living in wetlands) to “Extinct” (as of this writing, three subspecies of tiger — Bali, Javan, and Caspian tigers).
Wildlife biologists make these assessments using a variety of scientific tools to analyze data on wild cats.
These same biologists would be the first ones to tell you that all wild cats are “rare” in the sense of being hard to find in the field.
Why so scarce?
First of all, it’s necessary. The balance of nature limits cat numbers.
For example, did you know that it takes about a hundred zebras to keep just one lion around?
So just one lion needs a broad range that also can support all those dazzle-camouflage masters. Good luck trying to find that lion as it patrols all those square miles of territory!
The existence of prides has to be factored in, too, along with a few other things.
Anyway, studies done after taking overall conditions into account — zebra birth rates, annual rainfall or drought, lion hunting success percentages, pride dynamics, etc. (see how intricate ecology can get?) — these studies show that lion numbers statistically drop in areas that have less than a hundred zebras.
The lions probably aren’t starving. They might move on to better hunting grounds (which could then put them in conflict with another pride or with human settlements — more ecological complexities!).
Basically, having too many lions in one place will decimate zebra herds — then the lions really would starve! Too few lions, and the zebras will eat themselves (and everybody else) out of existence.
At 1:100, it seems to work out best for predator, prey, and the many square miles of habitat that they share.
All cats are such efficient killing machines that each one needs a large range to hunt over.
Curious conservationists then go in to count the cats, and as you might know from trying to find Fluffy when it’s time for a car ride, cats that don’t want to be seen deploy invisibility cloaks or something.
These days all sorts of data-collection techniques are available to make the wrangling easier — from radio collars to DNA analysis kits for cat hairs and scat.
While very helpful, such tools can’t directly tell the biologists much about feline population numbers, behavior, and other vital information. So estimates often are made when assessing risk of extinction and then later corrected if new or better informations comes in.
Our database about wild cats is always changing — that, in a nutshell, is why it’s so hard to say which cat is the rarest at any given moment.
Right now, cheetahs and Iberian lynxes are well-known examples of rare cats that combine actual low numbers and extreme risk of extinction.
Andean and Iriomote cats are just two of the many endangered and critically endangered species, respectively, that have been listed based on estimates, since they rarely show themselves and little is known about their wild populations.
As recently as 2002, researchers wondered if the cute little cats living in the remote High Andes were extinct. Camera traps now show that they are up there — but how many?
The only way to really answer that question is to set up more camera trap networks and estimate population numbers based on what these show.
It takes years and years of study — but isn’t it good to know that there are such cats out there!
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Sources include:
Amur Tiger Center. 2018. Saving Russian Heritage Together (Russian and English) http://amur-tiger.ru/data/report-2018.pdf
Cat Specialist Group. 2023. Classification of Cat Species in the IUCN Red List. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=74&L=0%253Fid%253D192%253Fid%253D49%253Fid%253D31%253Fid%253D%27%22 All CSG entries last accessed October 1, 2023.
___. 2023. African lion. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=108
___. 2023. Andean cat. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=86
___. 2023. Rusty-spotted cat. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=105
___. 2023. Cheetah.. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=107
___. 2023. Guiña. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=92
___. 2023. Iberian lynx. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=98
___. 2023. Jungle cat. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=114
___. 2023. Rusty’spotted cat. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=120
___. 2023. Tiger. http://www.catsg.org/index.php?id=124
Freer, R. A. 2004. The spatial ecology of the güiña (Oncifelis guigna) in southern Chile (pp. 1-219). Durham (UK): University of Durham. Available at Durham E-Theses Online http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3050/
Godfrey, D.; Lythgoe, J. N.; and Rumball, D. A. 1987. Zebra stripes and tiger stripes: the spatial frequency distribution of the pattern compared to that of the background is significant in display and crypsis. Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society, 32(4): 427-433.
Gradstein, F. M.; Ogg, J. G.; and Hilgen, F. G. 2012. On the geologic time scale. Newsletters on Stratigraphy. 45(2): 171-188.
Guardian News. 2021. Footage of elusive Andean cat. https://youtu.be/PWLoMyfTi14?si=hjWOLS46gR-dcz4L
International Society for Endangered Cats. 2023. Iriomote cat. https://wildcatconservation.org/wild-cats/asia/leopard-cat/iriomote-cat/ Last accessed October 1, 2023.
Johnson, W. E.; Eizirik, E.; Pecon-Slattery, J.; Murphy, W. J.; and others. 2006. The Late Miocene radiation of modern Felidae: A genetic assessment. Science, 311: 73-77.
Kitchener, A. C.; Breitenmoser-Würsten, C.; Eizirik, E.; Gentry, A.; and others. 2017. A revised taxonomy of the Felidae: The final report of the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group. https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/32616/A_revised_Felidae_Taxonomy_CatNews.pdf
Macdonald, D. W.; Loveridge, A. J.; and Nowell, K. 2010a. Dramatis personae: An introduction to the wild felids, in Biology and Conservation of Wild Felids, eds. Macdonald, D. W., and Loveridge, A. J., 3-58. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
NHK World Japan. 2022. Journeys in Japan: Iriomote. https://youtu.be/tsuy2-n0ATE?si=qXc_tslAs8K7eNnm
O’Brien, S. J., and Johnson, W. E. 2007. The evolution of cats. Scientific American, 297 (1): 68-75.
Sunquist, M. and Sunquist, F. 2002. Wild Cats of the World. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=IF8nDwAAQBAJ
Turner, A., and Antón, M. 1997. The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives: An Illustrated Guide to Their Evolution and Natural History. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wikipedia. 2023. IUCN red list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUCN_Red_List Last accessed October 1, 2023.
Flight To Wonder 