Happy International Cat Day!
Just had to share a post by the US Department of the Interior about this – good information on wildContinue Reading
Category: wild cats
Guest Video: The Secret Life of Mountain Lions
Live-action camera traps set by conservationists show the seldom-seen social life of cougars.
Wildcats
Sorting out wildcats is almost as difficult as herding cats. Here are general categories of these beautiful wild felines.
How Lions Roar
Lions can roar, but they can’t purr. This is because their vocal tract is shaped differently from a smaller cat.
Species Facts: The Puma
Call it what you will – cougar, panther, puma, catamount, or mountain lion. This beautiful animal has charisma.
Species Facts: The Flat-Headed Cat
Southeast Asia’s flat-headed cat is even rarer than the fishing cat. It’s also considered to be a better fisher.
Species Fact: The Pallas cat/Manul
This adorable feline has an impressive scientific alter ego: “Otocolobus manul”. Despite that metal-sounding name, Pallas cats aren’t superheroes – they are little cats that have carved out their own niche in an enormous, unfriendly world.
Species Facts: The Fishing Cat
Most people wouldn’t consider “saving wetlands” as the method of choice for protecting an endangered cat, but it’s just what Southeast Asia’s fishing cat needs. The only member of the cat family to live on fish is becoming increasingly rare outside Bangladesh and parts of eastern India.
Citizen Scientists, Cats, and Computers
All cats, big and small, like to keep secrets. It is our task as cat lovers to learn some of those secrets so we can make life even better for these beauties. The cats don’t make it easy for us. So we fool them. Today, technology like camera traps and GPS tracking collars collect a lot of data about unsuspecting domestic and wild cats. Then we laypeople help the experts use these tools to learn more about cats.
Species fact: Clouded leopards
Clouded leopards are adorable.
The “clouds” are those beautiful dark blotches on the coat.
These wild felines aren’t close relatives of the leopard, but modern research shows that clouded leopards do belong with the big cats. Their head and face are a little weird looking. That could be because these Southeast Asian cats are primitive – the first big cats to evolve some 11 million years ago. But some paleontologists have a different explanation for it.
