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Small Wild Cats
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Vadim Kirilyuk
Conservation biologist, Wildlife managerConservation biologist, Wildlife manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadim-kir...
"Ghost of the Steppe. Second Excerpt.
The Pallas’s cat avoids forests and dense thickets, only passing through them during migrations and dispersal. It also dislikes tall-grass steppes, which pose a fire hazard from which the cat cannot escape. Moreover, dense grass creates discomfort for the short-legged cat when moving around. Pallas’s cats prefer sparsely vegetated open plains but are most fond of slopes with ravines, rocky screes, and rocky outcrops. It might seem that in open habitats the animal would be easily spotted, but in reality, seeing the cat in the wild is a challenging task or a great stroke of luck. Even people who live in the cat’s habitat rarely see it. The cat leaves few tracks, even in snowy conditions. It rarely makes sounds, and when it does, they are quiet and mostly during the mating season.
A walking or sitting Pallas’s cat, upon spotting danger from afar, will try to quietly flee to the nearest shelter. If caught by surprise or lying in ambush near a pika burrow, it will press itself to the ground or snow as much as possible. In the open steppe, any potential predator primarily notices moving objects, so a hidden Pallas’s cat has a good chance of survival. This is one of its advantages, helping it to thrive for millions of years.
The cats have fairly large individual territories. They do not fiercely defend these from competitors but do mark them to indicate their presence. When food is abundant, Pallas’s cats pay little attention to each other, merely maintaining personal space and a proud individualism. With few shelters in the steppe, they must share, sometimes with two males resting in the same burrow a few meters apart, and females raising their kittens on opposite ends of a small rocky area or other multi-purpose shelter, such as a partially dismantled combine on an abandoned field. This is not always the case. When food becomes scarce, relationships become strained, especially among females, who start to strictly control their individual territories.
By March, as befits cats, Pallas’s cats become passionate. As the February sun warms up, the males start roaming in search of females. The females, however, do not rush about—they sit on a hillock near a burrow or on a rock ledge and quietly call out, "wau, wau," signaling their presence. During the mating season, fights between males occur, but not often. Females can also show aggression, fighting for a prime spot or chasing away a rival or overly persistent suitor."
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Here is another small cat. Looking rather like the Scottish Wildcat. This is the Corsican 'cat fox'.
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-mysteri...
"New genetic analysis has "revealed a unique genetic strain to the wild cats" found in the remote forest undergrowth of northern Corsica, it confirmed.
Genetic sampling clearly distinguishes the ring-tailed Corsican cat-foxes from mainland forest felines and domestic cats, said the OFB in a statement.
While resembling house cats in some ways, the cat-fox earned its name from its length—measuring 90 centimeters (35 inches) from head to tail—and its distinct black-tipped, ringed tail."
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A zoo in the war zone of Donetsk has sent its serval cats to a zoo in Kiev. Your browser may offer to translate, but do look because the photos are lovely. My translation below was made by RTE.
https://suspilne.media/645188-u-kiivs...
"A group of 4 servals found themselves in the very center of the war - Kurakhove, near Marianka in Donetsk region. Thanks to the efforts of animal activists, the animals were taken out of the shelling and transferred to Kyiv Zoo. They were sick, exhausted and under severe stress.
"Two months have passed, and the first pair of servals have moved on to the next stage of rehabilitation and socialization in their own enclosure," the statement reads.
For the comfort of Osiris and Sekhmet, the zoo staff provided everything necessary:
an African tree with climbing walls and claws
2 hammocks and a cozy loft for relaxation
a fountain for refreshment
three types of soil and a stone rock for walking and jumping.
There are also various toys and pillows in the house, because servals are cats, the zoo noted.
The zoo staff also informed that to bring the conditions even closer to natural ones, 3 types of lighting were installed in the enclosure: sunny-day, twilight-infrared, and night moonlight."
Mod
"The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which categorises species according to the level of risk they face in a "Red List" produced several times a year, yesterday bumped up the Iberian Lynx from "endangered" to "vulnerable".
While the Iberian Lynx shares the yellow eyes and short black stumpy tail with other lynx species, it is much smaller than them and has a distinctive black "beard" of long hair around its chin.
There were just 62 adults scattered across Mediterranean forests in 2001 but the population jumped to around 648 in 2022, IUCN said.
Today, the population has risen to more than 2,000, counting both young and adult lynxes across a range of thousands of kilometres covering rocky mountainous areas and valleys.
Francisco Javier Salcedo Ortiz, Coordinator of the LIFE Lynx-Connect project, which led the conservation action for the Iberian lynx called it "the greatest recovery of a cat species ever achieved through conservation" and praised a range of actors including landowners, farmers, hunters and the European Union which provided financial and logistical support.
Efforts have focused on increasing the abundance of its prey, a species of wild rabbit which is also endangered, programmes to free hundreds of captive lynxes and restoring scrublands and forests."
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https://phys.org/news/2024-08-rare-sp...
"While the team was hopeful one of the cameras, which will remain in place until October 2025, would pick up an ocelot, they were unsure.
"There hadn't been research done there in 10 years and there hadn't been a record in 50 years," Ragan said. "So we weren't sure, but we were really happy when we did get this record."
In the past decade, another ocelot, named Lil' Jefe, has been spotted roaming in the state, the Arizona Republic reported.
The recently spotted feline, however, "is a new cat not previously seen in the state," the zoo said.
"(Arizona Game and Fish Department) has conducted a pelage spot analysis comparing this ocelot with the current known ocelot in the state, as well as previous ocelots and concludes that this is indeed a new ocelot," Tracy McCarthey with AZGFD said in the release."
Mod
They are calling it salty liquorice, or salmiak.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...
Mod
"Three lynx that were illegally released in the Highlands earlier this year have moved to a new permanent home just a few miles from where they were found.
The wild cats were spotted in the Cairngorms National Park in early January, sparking a search before they were captured south of Aviemore.
After a period in quarantine at Edinburgh Zoo, the three female lynx have now moved to an enclosure at the Highland Wildlife Park in Kingussie, which is also run by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.
...
"Lynx were once a native species in Scotland, but they died out several hundred years ago.
There are suspicions the Cairngorms lynx were abandoned pets, or were let go by people who want to see the animals reinstated to wooded hills and glens.
The conservation group Lynx to Scotland support a formal, legal reintegration of the wild cats but they condemned the January release."
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Books mentioned in this topic
Wild Cats (other topics)Eye of the Drone (other topics)
These cats get less attention than the big ones, are less often found in zoos, cover less territory and are perhaps less studied.
Wild Cats Eye of the Drone