When Snow Leopards Reached Portugal

While the various species of "roaring cat" all share a great many points of similarity, most are easily distinguished from each other. Arguably, one of the most distinctive is the snow leopard (Panthera uncia). Not only does this have unusually thick fur for a wild cat, but it also has a longer tail than we would expect, and the face is shorter and wider than that of other roaring cats.

The snow leopard was first scientifically described by Johann Schreber in 1775 as a member of the genus Felis. The differences from other cats were sufficient that, in 1854, John Edward Gray proposed that it be given its own genus, Uncia. His original definition of the genus did not stand (it also included at least one species of "purring cat"), but it was resurrected again in the early 20th century, and used solely for snow leopards up until 2006. In that year genetic evidence placed it alongside the other "roaring cats" in Panthera, something that has been amply confirmed since.

Prehistoric Mammal Discoveries 2023

Potamotherium

It's the last post of the year for 2023, and that means it's time once again to take a brief look at discoveries from the last year in the world of fossil mammals that didn't make it into this blog. Because, while dinosaurs are undoubtedly popular, the study of prehistoric mammals is also a major field, aided by that, being (mostly) relatively recent they tend to be more numerous and better preserved. Of course, everyone's heard of woolly mammoths and sabretooth cats but there's plenty more out there and, if I'm going to zip through them at speed today, I'm also going to try and cover as wide a range as possible. So, let's get going...

Oligocene (Pt 5): The First Cats

Proailurus

As new herbivores entered Europe at the Grande Coupure, carnivores were bound to follow. As with their prey, these Asian newcomers seem to have rapidly outcompeted the native European forms, leading to a sudden turnover in the types of animals we find on the continent. Although we can say that these newcomers were "carnivorans" - the sort of mammalian carnivores we're mostly familiar with today - where exactly they place relative to the living families is harder to say.

Plesictis is an example here. It looked, so far as we can tell, rather like a polecat and was about the same size, so for much of the 20th century it was thought to be an early example of a mustelid, albeit one no more closely related to actual polecats than, say, badgers or otters are. More modern analyses are more circumspect; it may look like a mustelid in some respects, but it probably lived before those animals diverged from the raccoons and so can't be quite either. Palaeogale, which looked rather similar and was also originally assumed to be a mustelid, in fact turns out to be more related to cats and mongooses, but probably so far down the family tree that it's not yet possible to say much more than that.

The Sex Lives of Female Jaguars

There are many ways of classifying mating systems in animals, but one of the most basic uses four main types. In polygynous species, the male mates with as many females as he can get away with, driving away or out-competing any potential rivals. This ensures he can sire as many children as possible, while the female gains the advantage of a strong father for her offspring. This pattern is perhaps seen most strongly in deer and seals, but it's also seen, for example, in lions and gorillas. 

Monogamy is somewhat less common. Sometimes, it happens only because the species is sufficiently widespread that any given male is unlikely to find more than one receptive female during the breeding season, but it can also occur by choice, typically where raising young is a sufficiently arduous task that the father has to stay around after the birth to help. This is commonly associated with birds, but many mammals also form pair bonds for raising young. These include species of gibbon and small antelope that, in paternity tests, have shown essentially 100% loyalty to their mates. The prairie vole is well-studied in this regard, with the formation of the pair bond through prolonged and repeated mating having been linked to, among other things, the "cuddle hormone" oxytocin.

Spotting Ocelots

There are a number of different species of cat living in South America, including some that are not widely known by the general public. Across much of the continent, however, the most abundant are often the ocelots (Leopardus pardalis), outnumbering both the larger cats that require substantial food resources and the smaller, more localised ones. Aside from the desert regions west of the Andes, ocelots live across almost the whole of the continent from northern Argentina to the Caribbean coast and their population is large enough that they are not generally considered a threatened species.

But that broader picture, which is generally positive for the species, hides some local variation. They are not, for example, especially common in the Caatinga, the area of dry scrubland that covers the easternmost regions of Brazil. More significantly, perhaps, they also become less progressively common once you leave South America and head north. Ocelots are found throughout Central America, and along both coastal regions of Mexico, and they are even found in small numbers in southern Texas and Arizona. In both of these latter countries, however, their populations are low enough that they are listed as endangered species by the local authorities responsible for such matters - the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources.

Small Cats: The Domestic Cat's Closest Relatives

Sand cat

The range of species included in the genus Felis has changed significantly over the years. Because of the way such things are named, it includes, by definition, the domestic cat and all its closest relatives - but how close is close?

Unsurprisingly, the genus appears in the very first catalogue of scientific names, all the way back in 1758. At the time, it included every one of the seven species of cat known to the author - wild/domestic cats, lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, lynxes, and ocelots. Over the next few decades, whenever a new cat species was described (as you might imagine, cheetahs and pumas were among the first) it was added to the same genus. At the time, the modern concept of "taxonomic family" didn't exist, and, round about the same time that families became a thing and the Felidae were named, the big cats were hived off into a genus of their own, Panthera.

The Cat Family: Domestic and Wildcats

European wildcat

Perhaps surprisingly, there is some confusion and debate as to the correct scientific name for the familiar domestic moggy. There are, in fact, at least three different possibilities, all of which have their supporters among the people who study such things.

Firstly, there's the option that domestication has had such radical effects on the cat that it can be considered a separate species. In this case, its correct name is Felis catus. That name was first awarded to the animal in 1758, in the oldest listing of scientific animal names still considered valid. At the time, Carl Linnaeus, who wrote the list in question, intended it to apply to both wild and domestic forms, although the domestic version was raised to subspecies status by Johann Erxleben 22 years later.

Miocene (Pt 18): Return of the Cats

Barbourofelis

For much of the Miocene, bears were represented in North America by the single genus Ursavus. This was relatively primitive, and small by the standards of modern bears, although still easily identifiable as such. It seems to have left no local descendants, but, around 7 or 8 million years ago, it was joined - and eventually replaced - by new arrivals from Asia.

The best known of these were Indarctos and Agriotherium, bears that were widespread across the Northern Hemisphere of the time, and common enough in both Asia and Europe. Indarctos was the smaller of the two, roughly the size of a black bear, and with what was probably a similarly omnivorous diet. It was likely more closely related to pandas than to other modern bears, and died out as the Miocene ended.

Being Top Cat

If you happen to own a cat, especially an un-neutered male, you may have noticed that they sometimes pee on things. Shocking, I know.

Spraying is just one way that cats leave scent marks, whether to warn other cats away from 'their' territory, or to advertise their availability to members of the opposite sex. And, as we'd reasonably expect, this is as much true of large wild cats as it is of the domestic moggy. Indeed, we have a reasonable understanding of how some wild cats use these markings. For instance, we know that, just as in the domestic animal, male North American cougars spray more than females, both to mark their territory and to advertise for females.

Breeding Cats in Captivity

The Sumatran tiger is a critically endangered subspecies

Although the actual number may be higher, depending on the status of certain subspecies, there are 38 widely recognised species of wild cat. Of these, five are formally considered to be "endangered species", and a further thirteen are "threatened", but not sufficiently so to fall into the riskier bracket. Taken together, that's almost half of the total species, and it ignores the significant number of species that are threatened in parts of their natural range, but survive well enough somewhere else.

The primary reasons for this are habitat loss and poaching, and virtually every species of cat - even those, such as the puma/cougar/mountain lion, that aren't threatened overall - has a declining population. Fortunately, the same thing that makes wild cats attractive to poachers - their undeniable charisma and beauty - also inspires conservation efforts of the sort that, say, the Ethiopian amphibious rat (Nilopegamys plumbeus) could only dream of.

Lions in the Carpathians

When I last talked about Eurasian cave lions, back in 2013, I said that there was some debate as to whether they were a distinct species, or just an unusual subspecies of the modern, living, lion. Although the issue is, perhaps, still not entirely resolved, it's probably fair to say that the clear majority opinion these days is that they were a separate species (Panthera spelaea).

This swing in opinion has been helped by new genetic data, something that we can obtain because the animals died out so recently - around 12,000 BC by most estimates. Specifically, an analysis published in 2016 was able to obtain the full mitochondrial genome of a pair of cave lions, allowing a more detailed genetic analysis than ever before. This showed that, as expected based on earlier studies, cave lions really were "lions" in the sense that they were more closely related to modern lions than thy were to, say, leopards.

The Hunting Grounds of Small Cats

The big cats - lions, tigers, leopards, and so on - are arguably amongst the well-known of all wild animals. They frequently figure in zoos and nature documentaries, and, from the scientific perspective, they have been the subject of numerous studies down the years. Even the medium-sized cats, such as lynxes, bobcats, and ocelots, are well known, and, at least in the case of the European and North American species, also well-studied.

We know somewhat less about the assorted species of genuinely small cat - the ones that are about the size of the typical domestic moggy. Yet there are an awful lot of them, even if most members of the public would likely have a hard time naming more than one or two.

One such example is Geoffroy's cat (Leopardus geoffroyi) named for - though not discovered by - the pioneering French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy St Hilaire. This lives in southern South America, reaching Bolivia, Paraguay, and the southern tip of Brazil in the north, and also found just over the border in Chile, but mainly inhabiting Argentina and Uruguay. While they prefer terrain with scattered trees and plenty of bushes, the also live in open grassland, and are found right down to the very southern coast of South America, although not on the islands beyond.

Counting the Clouded Leopards

There's no definitive answer to the question of which group of wild mammals have the greatest public popularity, but there can be little doubt that the big cats are up there with the best of them. They are a popular subject for wildlife documentaries, and, for example, the BBC's Big Cat Diary ran for nine seasons (some under slightly different titles) between 1996 and 2008.

Because they're the easiest to film, living as they do in relatively open and accessible terrain, four species of big cat get the lion's share (ahem) of the televisual attention: lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs. But, of course, these are not the only ones. Taking a wider look, the cat family as it exists today has two major branches: the big cats, or "pantherines", and the "true felines". That latter group is the larger of the two, including not only the domestic moggie and such species as the ocelot, but even some relatively large animals, such as servals and bobcats. Perhaps more surprisingly, both the puma/cougar/mountain lion and the cheetah actually turn out to be "true felines" when you look at their evolutionary ancestry - in fact, they are closer to domestic cats than they are to, say, lynxes.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon

Why bother being nocturnal? Being active only at night makes it much harder to see what you're doing, and while it's possible to develop good night vision to minimise the problem, this is evolutionary costly. Well, if you're a herbivore, the advantage of being active at night is that it's much easier to hide from predators, since, they, too, would have to evolve good night vision to find you. And, if you're a predator, the advantage is that at least some of your competitors won't be around at night, allowing you to snack on nocturnal herbivores and not have to share your food supply.

But this, of course, cuts both ways. For example, while darkness hides you from predators, it also makes it more difficult to spot predators coming if they have seen you. As so often, this leads to a balance, and different species taking advantage of different points on the continuum of possible behaviours.

We can see some of the effects of this in how animals respond to different levels of darkness. Not all nights are equal, after all. The most predictable change is in the amount of moonlight, with the night of a full moon being considerably brighter than a night without a visible moon. Somewhat less predictably, of course, there's the weather, unless, perhaps, you live in a desert where overcast skies are fairly unlikely. So, if you're a nocturnal herbivore, should you be more active on the night of a full moon, or less?

Pleistocene (Pt 11): Sabretooth Smilodon

Smilodon fatalis

Over the  course of the last three parts of this series, I have looked at the various large herbivores that lived in North America during, and between, the Ice Ages. Naturally, there were also predators feeding on these animals, and none is more famous than Smilodon, the sabretooth cat.

However, Smilodon was by no means the only sabretooth cat, even in Pleistocene North America. Indeed, the trend for large cat-like animals to evolve huge, sabre-like canines, is one that arose many times during the Age of Mammals. So there are a wide range of, often quite unrelated, animals that look like "sabretooths." However, when we refer to "sabretooth cats" in particular, we're generally referring to the group technically called the machairodontines.

The machairodontines are one of three main subfamilies within the cat family, and the only one to have gone extinct; the other two are the big cats (lions, tigers, etc.), and the "true" felines (everything from cougars to house cats). They first appeared about 10 million years ago, long before the Pleistocene, and represent a genuine group of cats, descended from a single ancestor, and about equally related to the other two kinds, which arose slightly later. In fact, they don't all have enormous teeth - at least, no more so than a tiger does, which is quite large enough, really - but most of the later forms do.

Battle of the Sabretooths

Machairodus giganteus

The cat family is divided into two living subfamilies. One group are the pantherines, or large cats, which include lions, tigers, jaguars, and the various kinds of leopard. The other are the felines (which means that, in the technical, scientific sense, lions are not felines - the correct collective term that includes all members of the cat family is "felid"). The felines are quite variable in size, from cougars and cheetahs at the high end, through a range of mid-sized cats such as lynxes and ocelots, down to wildcats and their familiar domestic relatives.

But there once used to be a third subfamily of cats, and they represent, with the possible exception of mammoths, what are probably the most widely known of all extinct mammals. In fact, I'd guess that they are the only extinct mammals that come at all close to dinosaurs in terms of popularity. I refer, of course, to the sabretooth cats.

Chances are, especially if you're American, the sabre-tooth cat you've heard most about is Smilodon. This is actually three different species of cat, albeit very closely related. The largest was about the size of a lion, but with a short tail, like a bobcat. They used to live in both North and South America, and died out only around 10,000 years ago, perhaps not coincidentally shortly after humans became numerous on those continents. (Not, one assumes, that humans would have hunted Smilodon themselves - but they may well have eaten much of the cats' preferred prey).

On the Origin of Tigers

South China tiger, perhaps the most primitive living subspecies

The tiger (Panthera tigris) is surely one of the most iconic of all mammals; instantly recognisable, and widely used in images illustrating the beauty of the world's wild animals. But what is the history of this most familiar of beasts? How did the tiger come to be?

There are six living subspecies of tiger, and at least a further two that went extinct as recently as the twentieth century. One way to trace the origin of tigers is to examine the genetics and physical features of the different subspecies and see how they compare. When we do this, we find that the Sumatran tiger appears to be a distinct lineage (it has even been suggested that it should be a considered a separate species, although nothing has really come of this), although the critically endangered South China tiger may have arisen even earlier. One of the first splits after this involved some tigers heading out to the eastern parts of Indonesia, where they established themselves as the Javan and Balinese subspecies - both now extinct. Of those on the mainland, one headed to India as the Bengal tiger, while the other went further north to become the Siberian tiger. The remaining two subspecies, the Malayan and Indochinese, are clearly related to one another, although there is some dispute as to whether they are closer to their relatives in Siberia or those in Bengal.

Endangered Cats of the High Andes

A few weeks ago in the UK, we had the 10-yearly treat of filling in our national census forms. Once all the information from these forms is collected, we will have an official figure for the number of humans living in our country. Unfortunately, finding out the same figure for wild animals isn't quite so easy. Yet studying the population densities and numbers of wild animals is often of more than academic interest. A great many species are endangered, and without accurate ideas of how many of them are, we can't tell how endangered they might be, what strategies we might have to use to protect them, and whether or not those strategies are working.

Of course, animals can't fill in census forms, but there's more to it than that. If the animal lives in large, highly visible herds, it may not be so difficult - although even there, you have to be sure you're not counting the same animal twice, and that you're picking a suitably representative area to study (since, realistically, you're not going to go out there and do a head count of every such animal in existence). But many animals aren't so obliging. They may be small, they may actively hide from humans, they may be nocturnal or crepuscular, or they may just live somewhere its hard to get to, or in a jungle so full of plants its hard to spot anything. The rarer they are, the harder it becomes to find them, and yet those are exactly the ones we're most interested in.

Cat Eats Pikachu

We're all familiar with the various species of Big Cat - the lion, tiger, jaguar, and so forth. However, with a few notable exceptions, the smaller wild cats are less well known. This is hardly surprising, since they are pretty good at hiding, and tend to do so at the first sign of an approaching zoologist or natural history camera team. When it comes to those that are about the size of a house cat, the words "shy" and "secretive" often spring to mind when describing them.

In fact, there are actually a large number of such cat species, found in every continent except Australia and Antarctica. Although a lot of them tend to prefer woodland - with undergrowth from which they can pounce on unsuspecting dinner - they have adapted to a surprisingly wide range of habitats, such as mountains, deserts, and swamps. In total, there are 23 recognised species that are at least approximately the size of a house cat.

The one in this picture is Pallas's cat, also called the manul (Octocolobus manul). It lives in central Asia, and can be found from northern Iran as far across as north-eastern China, taking in places like Afghanistan and Turkmenistan on the way. It likes hills and high grasslands rather than forests, using rocks and low bushes as cover while hunting.