These images of an unusual cat were captured by camera trap in the Sundarbans in India. It has been suggested that this is a new species because its markings are intermediate between a fishing cat and a leopard cat. I think it's a leopard cat.
From The Times of India:
The deeper you go into the Sunderbans, the more mysterious it is. The camera traps that have snapped 18 Bengal tigers outside the core area of the mangrove forests also captured two photos of a never-before-seen cat. It could be another species altogether, a eureka moment for conservationists and wildlife enthusiasts.
Forest officers scanning through a bunch of pictures of the wild stopped in their tracks when they came across a small, black cat with a long tail. Nothing of the sort had been seen in decades of documentation and exploration in the Sunderbans.
The Sunderbans is the only tiger reserve in India where leopards have never been seen. Its Bangladeshi side reported the last sighting of a leopard in 1931. The cat spotted in the camera traps is bigger than a wild cat and smaller than a leopard, say sources. It’s not yet known whether it’s a new species but forest officials believe it is a melanistic leopard-cat, a rarity in the animal world…
“We have never seen any animal like this in the Sunderbans. Apart from the 18 tigers, scores of other cats, including jungle and fishing cats, were found during the exercise, which was done outside the reserve area for the first time. Most of them were expected till we came upon two sightings of a black cat with a long tail,” said Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve director Pradeep Vyas.
I think it’s an unusually colored leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis).
These cats are pretty widely distributed in Asia, and they come in several morphs, which were once thought to be several unique species.
I could be wrong about this, of course, and I would definitely like to be proven wrong on this one.
But I can’t convince myself that this is anything other than a leopard cat.
Why not the Asiatic Golden Cat.
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS435US435&biw=1241&bih=584&authuser=0&tbm=isch&tbnid=croD6jgqzJCE6M:&imgrefurl=http://lynx.uio.no/lynx/catsgportal/cat-website/catfolk/temmin01.htm&docid=wovDN1P56Tm6fM&imgurl=http://lynx.uio.no/lynx/catsgportal/cat-website/catfolk/pictures/asigcat2.jpg&w=220&h=290&ei=vCNrT5n-CPGpsAKquqSPBg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=234&vpy=23&dur=290&hovh=232&hovw=176&tx=104&ty=99&sig=105217295836384583011&page=1&tbnh=128&tbnw=97&start=0&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0
Asian golden cats are the size of a small lynx.
Further, spotted ones have been found only in China, and none have been found in the Sundarbans.
But this is still a possibility that should be considered.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Yes, you are correct. I was worried about size, but of course size can be misleading without a reference. Its head in the lateral picture is indicative of a smaller felid, e.g. leopard cat. The top picture looks different, and it has the facial markings of an Asiatic Golden Cat:
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS435US435&biw=1241&bih=584&authuser=0&tbm=isch&tbnid=KCgharzaQvn2YM:&imgrefurl=http://rzss.wordpress.com/tag/asiatic-golden-cat/&docid=MbCf6H1cRx2VGM&imgurl=http://rzss.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/asiatic-golden-cat_0003.jpg&w=1882&h=2274&ei=MDhrT7TrBonHsQKYsoX7BQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=677&vpy=117&dur=2774&hovh=247&hovw=204&tx=117&ty=129&sig=105217295836384583011&page=1&tbnh=127&tbnw=105&start=0&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:5,s:0
(sorry for the long hyperlink!)
Please note the white line from the lower eyelidlid/lateral commissure (where eyelids meet) across the cheek. Having said that, without knowing for sure that the pictures are of the same animal, I feel like we are looking at two different animals. The upper picture has a more robust looking head, while the bottom picture looks more gracile. Again, it is difficult to determine relative sizes without a frame of reference.
After looking at various AGC and ALC pictures, I noticed their is a great deal of convergence in pelage between some of the larger leopard cats and the face normal colored Asiatic golden cats and face and body of spotted AGC.
Amur LC
http://www.biolib.cz/en/taxonimage/id5747/
AGC
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS435US435&biw=1241&bih=584&authuser=0&tbm=isch&tbnid=sXv5jeqKlC83UM:&imgrefurl=http://www.thefeaturedcreature.com/2010/11/asian-golden-cat-saved-from-cooking-pot.html&docid=f8I6CXFCBB0xlM&imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jhW52aMy8UU/TPV4X817MCI/AAAAAAAABro/-WPufNh-7xI/s1600/Screen%25252Bshot%25252B2010-11-30%25252Bat%25252B2.13.28%25252BPM.png&w=568&h=423&ei=0TlrT__1JoWusgL0u-iDBg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=674&vpy=279&dur=1892&hovh=194&hovw=260&tx=155&ty=98&sig=105217295836384583011&page=1&tbnh=122&tbnw=159&start=0&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:0
I’d have to say that an Asian Golden Cat should be considered. There is indeed a lot of overlap in the pelage between AGC and ALC, and both show considerable variation within populations. I don’t really get a sense of size from the images available, but there is considerable size difference between the two species, and I would assume that is probably the easiest way to determine whether this cat could be one or the other. I’d have to say I agree that it looks very much like an “ocelot” morph AGC.
It’s likely a variation of markings… like a Cheetah Vs a King Cheetah. Same cat…different patterns.
There are leopard cats with coat patterns resembling those of ocelot. I think that’s what we’re seeing here. Cat species’ coat patterns are very variable, and probably are even more so in regions where there isn’t a lot of human interference with the species. Local populations into which a mutant color morph is born and becomes entrenched are not that uncommon, if the morph does not interfere with
Depending on one’s point of view – classification of animals into species is somewhat arbitrary, after all – the leopard cat may not be a single species but a widespread group of very closely related species (same as with ocelots & many other species). It depends on how you define “species”. Two species of clouded leopard, or are hey subspecies? Three species of pampas cat? Three of ocelot? Dog, wolf, coyote: species, subspecies, or something else, a “superspecies”, if you will? There are valid arguments both for and against separating those species; I doubt that 100% agreement will ever be reached.
My personal view is that true domestication changes the animals so much that the domesticates are distinct species, closely derived from and related to their parent species.
Dogs are wolves. I have no problem calling them wolves. The thing is they are mostly derived from wolves that are uncommonly studied or kept in captivity. Dogs and wolves are often more genetically similar than humans of different races. So it’s really touchy to say they are separate species.
I don’t think domestication has the power to create species. It might if domesticated species were allowed to exist in isolation for a very long time. Dogs and wolves don’t exist in isolation. There has always been a gene flow between wild and domestic. Black wolves derive from dogs. Small dogs derive from Middle Eastern wolves.
I think it has a way of altering extant species, but the truth is we don’t know how it has altered them. We say that dogs derived from wolves, but we are assuming that wolves behaved much more similarly to the wolves we have today. I actually don’t. I think the original wolves behaved much more like very curious dogs, and they were more than willing to hook up with people.
I have yet to find one characteristic that dogs have that wolves never have and vice versa, unless we’re talking about bizarre conformation that results from selective breeding. Even now there are wolves that behave like dogs when tamed, and there are domestic dogs, like certain azawakh, that are as reactive and nervous as any wild wolf. Like many wolves in captive situations, they bond with just a few people.
I have known of dogs of highly specialized and domestic breeds that have been able to form packs in the wild and hunt deer competently. And there have been wolves that have been trained as retrievers and even police dogs. Dingoes are derived from fully domesticated dogs that re-adapted to living as wild wolves in an environment in which there was no agriculture or garbage dumps, while Italian wolves live on garbage, competing with and exchanging genes with domestic dogs that do the same.
I think we’ve got a very distorted idea of the differences between wolves and dogs because most of the wolves that are studied are large North American wolves or those from Northern and Eastern Europe that have been derived from populations that have experienced lots of persecution. I don’t think we’ve accounted for how much persecution has likely changed the wolf from the time dogs were domesticated.
I think this Canis familiaris species is joke. I don’t see how contriving it into a species helps our understanding helps all that much.
Two books I recommend on this issue: Dog Sense by John Bradshaw and How the Dog Became the Dog by Mark Derr. They don’t necessarily agree on everything, but I think they debunk the notion that dogs represent a distinct species fairly well.
But keep in mind, that I think there is only one species of wolf in North America and Eurasia. That’s what the bulk of the genetic evidence suggests this. The red wolf is a coyote with some wolf in it, and the uniqueness of the wolves from the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayas hasn’t been confirmed in genome-wide assays. Only their mitochondrial DNA lineages are unique and ancient. The so-called Eastern wolf of Ontario and Quebec is just a wolf with recent coyote ancestry.
Coyotes and wolves do have enough genetic and behavioral differences to be regarded as distinct species. You simply don’t have that wolves and dogs, contrary to popular belief. Even the studies that show dogs to have enhanced human reading skills when compared to wolves are not universal. There have been studies that have found that wolves are as good or even better than dogs at responding to pointing gestures.
*if the morph does not interfere with the cats’ survival in some way.
>oops<