“I has found a sister group! But it no look like meh!!? (Image: Alexa from Pixabay)
True enough, Fluffy.
But Prionodon looks juuuust cat-like enough to have made wildlife biologists curious about a possible connection to Family Felidae ever since linsangs were first described by western scientists in the early 1800s.
And yet, notes Dr. Wikipedia, the boffins initially decided that the resemblance was only a coincidence!
Family connections
There are four known species of linsang (as this shy critter is known on Java).
Linsangs are so small and secretive that the only online photos and videos I can find of them in the wild look like a tail walking through vegetation, with some sort of miniature animal attached — seen here in Indonesia. (Image: Sughi Wehea, CC BY-SA-NC 2.0)
Two prowl through the rainforests and tropical uplands of south central and southeastern Asia and the other two linsang species carnivorize small animals, as well as munching on plants, in central and western rainforests in Africa.
Besides the feline resemblances, linsangs also have the long, slinky shape of a viverrid, particularly a genet, so linsangs were filed under the Viverridae family label for a while.
It wasn’t until molecular biology became a thing that the true family connections appeared.
…As the relationship between linsangs and cats was thought to be rather distant…this [resemblance] was considered an example of convergent evolution. However, DNA analysis indicates that while the African linsangs (Poiana) are true viverrids closely related to the genets, the Asiatic linsangs (Prionodon) are not and may instead be the closest living relatives of the family Felidae…The similarities between Asiatic linsangs and cats are thus more likely to be due to common ancestry, while the similarities between the two genera of linsangs must be convergent [evolution].
— Dr. Wikipedia (emphasis added)
More information
Videos:
Here are some relatively clear views of a banded linsang in Sumatra:
And here is a spotted linsang — mislabeled as a civet (viverrid) — in Thailand:
Evolution:
Those two Asiatic linsang species are the two closest living relatives to cats.
Families Prionodon and Felidae parted ways some 25 to 27 million years ago, according to Hassanin et al. (jargon alert).
IUCN Red List status:
According to AI response generated by this search on October 20, 2024:
🐱🐱🐱
All righty, then — we’ve got the cat family on record now, but we are not yet done with the feliforms.
We’ve seen that family Felidae is older than hyenas and Malagasy carnivores, but there is one more family to go…
“What dat family?” “Izzit heer yet?” “Which way it comin?” (Image: Nat Geo Wild
Featured image: Internet Archive Book Images, public domain.
Flight To Wonder 