Are Leopard Cats Extinct

People ask, are leopard cats extinct. The simple answer is NO. This is in part because they have a wide range and are an exception to the rule that wildcats do not adapt well to human activity.

In Malaysia where the leopard cat's habitat, the forest, is being destroyed and replaced with plantations of palm trees, the leopard cat has adapted to the new environment and hunts almost exclusively palm rats rather than its usual diet of small mammals, birds and reptiles found in the forest.

So the wild Asian Leopard Cat (ALC) population is doing well in certain parts of the world. For the wild cat to survive in a human world it must adapt to the human way and the ALC does this admirably.

It is rated least concern (LC) by the IUCN Red List and its population is said to stable. I personally doubt this. Population size is unknown.



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