4 iconic wild cat species' numbers slashed over past 50 years (Infographic)

Most of us who read about the wild cat species and conservation understand that there has been a dramatic drop in numbers across the board. Here is an infographic showing the drop in population numbers of the lion, tiger, cheetah and leopard over the past 50 years with some additional information.

The the most important thing to note is (1) even the best experts sometimes don't know population numbers of wild cat species and when they do know (an estimate) the data is about 10 years old. Conservation is in a pretty poor state in my view and (2) there are some wonderful individual conservationists and groups concerned with conservation but the leaders of countries and the politicians are not truly committed to wildlife conservation and in this instance the conservation of the wild cat species.

That is why there's been a consistent decline over the past 50 years. The decline has been dramatic and shocking. It will continue for most of the species until the only individuals remaining on the planet will be those behind bars in zoos. Shame for the generations of kids to be born in the future.

The future of the wild cats from the smallest namely the rusty-spotted cat to the largest namely the Siberian tiger is pretty dire actually. I am very pessimistic but I could be wrong. I just don't see a great future for these species including the great iconic species.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Cheetah meow is part of their rich vocal repertoire

Cheetahs have a rich vocal repertoire. And before I go any further, I'm going to stress the fact that it includes a meow which is very like that of the domestic cat. It's a bit louder and a little bit wilder but unmistakably a genuine meow, which doesn't surprise me one bit because this large wild cat species really does have some domestic cat traits. 

Captive cheetah meowing. Screenshot.

I've just seen a picture of a cheetah cosying up to a photographer. In the photo the cheetah has a GPS collar around their neck and it's in the wild but they decided that they would like to have a bit of human company. They can be like that sometimes. 

It is why, hundreds of years ago, they were tamed to hunt with rich humans in India and other Asian countries for sport. They are therefore tameable and somewhat domesticatable but don't think that they make good pets because they do not.

My thanks to the TikToker 'renn' for the video below.

The cheetah also has a yelp which is a brief, high-pitched yow sounding vocalisation which can travel some distance. A scientist, Mr R McLaughlin, said that he heard the yelp 2 km away.

When the cheetah utters this sound, they open and close their mouth rapidly while their abdomen and head jerk with the effort.

It is a contact call normally made by the mother who has been separated from her cubs or by young cheetahs who have lost their mother or siblings. That information is according to Mr J Kingdon (1977).

Another contact call would be the churr. This sound is used by mothers to call or encourage their offspring and by male cheetahs to relocate their siblings or coalition partners and also in a variety of other circumstances according to Mr TM Caro (1994).

The churr is also called a "stutter". It can indicate that the female is in heat (oestrus) and when males use the stutter, they do so to indicate an interest in a female according to Mr TM Caro (1993).

The cheetah also gurgles. This is a friendly close-range vocalisation. That information, by the way, come from Mr G Peters (1984).

Further, cheetahs occasionally growl when involved in agonistic encounters at a kill. They also moan when they are attacked or threatened by other cheetahs, leopards or lions. That information comes from a variety of researchers/scientists including TM Caro mentioned above.

And finally, the cheetah purrs like a domestic cat during friend encounters and after a meal or when resting. Of course, the cheetah purr is much louder than that of the domestic cat.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Why is the cat omitted from the Chinese zodiac? It is not!

Answer (my answer!): the cat is listed as one of the 12 zodiac animal species as the tiger, a specific species within the cat family. The creators of the zodiac therefore included the cat but as a distinct species and not generically as at the time of creation of the zodiac - 2,500 years ago - there were no domestic cats in China.

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There are 12 Chinese zodiac signs, in the following order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. There is ostensibly a shocking omission: the 'cat'. With the domestic dog, the domestic cat is the most popular companion animal in the world.

However, the cat is listed in the zodiac as a specific species namely the tiger. If you read the serious version set out below, you'll see what I mean.

Chinese zodiac of 12 animals. Image: MikeB

There are 2 versions for the reason for the omission. One serious and the other a myth. 

Serious version

The Chinese Zodiac was created about 2500 years ago. It hasn't changed since that time. At the time of its creation the domestic cat had not arrived in China. This occurred when pet cats were introduced to China along the silk Road during the period 386-589 A.D. around 1600 years ago.

On those figures, the Chinese Zodiac was created 900 years, almost 1000 years, before the people who created the Zodiac had seen domestic cats.

Comment: I think that's a pretty weak argument. My research indicates that the South China tiger was in China 2 million years ago. There must've been tigers in China when they created the Zodiac.

Tiger

This is why the tiger is listed as one of the signs of the Chinese Zodiac. The tiger is obviously a cat, actually the world's largest cat species. Therefore, they could not include another cat species in the zodiac when the domestic cat arrived a thousand years later. Logically this must be the reason why the "cat" is not specifically listed as a generic name for all the species of cats.

The problem is that they have taken one species of the cat family - the tiger - and listed it whereas for the other animals they have used generic terms and not broken it down into specific species.

Myth

The myth plays out as follows. The divine Jade Emperor organised a race for animals and there would be 12 winners each one getting a spot on the zodiac.

The cat and the rat were in the race but they were friends. They joined the race together and they hitched a ride on an ox to cross a river. While they were crossing the river the rat pushed the cat off the ox because they were fearful of being beaten by the cat in the race.

The cat did not drown but lost the chance of securing one of the 12 zodiac signs. This, incidentally, is why the cat hunts rats which is not actually true because modern day rats are a little bit too big for the average domestic cat!

How do cats cool down? 6 ways.

I'm going to refer to domestic cats mainly. I can think of 6 ways which help a cat to cool down. Cats do sweat but in a much more limited way than humans. They sweat from their paw pads and the latent heat of evaporation cools down their paw pads. You will see the sweaty pawprints of a cat in a veterinarian's consultation room on the table. This is because as they are nervous and agitated, they over heat and they sweat.

Licking helps to cool a cat as well as clean them. Photo: PDSA.

Another way is licking their coat. The saliva deposited on the coat evaporates and once again through the physical properties of the latent heat of evaporation, it's cools the cat down slightly. This is a substitute for sweating.

A third way is panting like a dog. I'm sure that you have seen this before. My female cat used to plant in the car in her cage when I took her to the veterinarian. She became agitated and overheated and so instinctively she panted to cool down. Panting as a cooling process works in the same way as sweating.

A fourth way is to find some shade! If a cat is lying in the sun, and they do like to lie in the sun as we know, after a while they will remove themselves from that hot spot and find some shade and a patch of cool ground to lie on to cool down.

In fact, using shade is the most natural and obvious way for a cat to cool down. You see the big cats like lions and tigers resting in shade, particular the lions because they live in quite open territory which is sunbaked and quite arid. They find a tree to rest and snooze under. Whereas tigers live in landscapes that are far lusher and more covered with vegetation and trees.

If a tiger wants to cool down, they jump into the water. Tigers love water and they often spend a long time in it because they live in parts of the world, Asia, where there are high temperatures. Jaguars also spend quite a lot of time in cool water. Domestic cats don't usually jump into water to cool down. Some individual cats might though such as an F1 Savannah cat.

Some lions rest on the branches of trees. This takes them off the ground where there are less flies and also where it is cooler. There might be more of a breeze 10 or 15 feet above the ground as well. This may help them keep cool.

I have just thought of a sixth way: drinking cool water from a faucet. Some domestic cats are particularly fond of this. It quenches the thirst and cools the insides a little bit.

The physics of the way sweat cools the body is quite technical. The latent heat of vaporization (evaporation) is the heat consumed or discharged when matter disintegrates, changing from fluid to gas.

Here is a video on the topic:

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

What wild cat species are native to Asia?

Here is a list of wild cat species native to Asia:

1. Asiatic golden cat
2. Borneo bay cat
3. Clouded leopard
4. Fishing cat
5. Flat-headed cat
6. Jungle cat
7. Asiatic leopard cat
8. Marbled cat
9. Rusty-spotted cat
10. Sunda clouded leopard
11. Chinese desert cat
12. Bengal tiger
13. Sumatran tiger
14. China tiger
15. Leopard
16. Asiatic lion

You can read about these wild cat species in detail by clicking on this link.

Here is the smallest wild cat species anywhere and it lives in Asia, the rusty-spotted cat:

Rusty-spotted cat. Photo: Pixabay

And here is the largest, the Bengal tiger. Actually it is not quite the largest. That title goes to the Siberian tiger which is technically in Asia.

Bengal tiger. Photo: Pixabay. The Bengal tiger is the second largest Asian wild cat species
after the Siberian tiger.

How domestic cats came to be in a nutshell

Evolution of the species. How domestic cats came to be in a nutshell. Screebshot.

Some people want to know how domestic cats evolved to where they are today. To answer the question you have to believe in Darwin's theory of evolution as set out in his book On the Origin of Species published on Thursday, 24 November 1859. If you believe in his theory as opposed to creation by a God (creationism) then you have to study the theory of evolution to fully understand it. 

Remember that life emerged on Earth 3.5 billion years ago so evolution is a slow process. That's way we have the species we have. It took millions of tiny changes. Also the first early human ancestors orginate from 3.5 million years ago.

Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

This will allow you understand how domestic cats came to be - the first part of the story. The video below explains it quite nicely I think. It is quite complicated. 

Image: MikeB.

You can click here too if you want to read about the evolution of the family of cats.

The theory of evolution explains how natural selection produced the family of cats. There are about thirty-six species of cat, one of which is the domestic cat. All the others are wild cat species. The domestic cat is essentially a domesticated North African wild cat.

Over the ten thousand years of domestication of the North African wild cat, the species evolved from being striped tabby cats to a wide range of coat types. This happened naturally and then people intervened through formal selective breeding or artificial selection since about 1850. Although there would have been some selective breeding by people on an ad hoc basis in the early development of the domestic cat as they preferred coat types.

Through artificial selection, as carried out under the auspices of cat fancy (cat breeders who create purebred cats of a certain breed for cat shows and for sale) about 104 cat breeds were created, as an absolute maximum. To these purebred cats you have to add the vast majority of domestics cats namely random bred cats. Also we must not forget the cats who should be domesticated but are feral (wild), the feral cats.

Random bred cats are still evolving through natural selection. That, in a nutshell is how domestic cats came to be...!

Serval cats as pets

Do servals make good pets? They can be very attractive. Look at this photograph below of a young serval in someone's home sitting on the bed looking blissfully happy. What's wrong with that? It looks as though it worked out very well. But we don't know the back story. And I don't want to paint an incorrect or too negative a picture because it can work out quite well (rarely).

Pet serval looking happy. Photo: Cats of Instagram

But in my opinion having a serval as a pet is likely not to work out that well for various reasons. Firstly, they are a wild cat species. If they are raised from a new-born kitten by humans they might fit in quite well. But if they are adopted as a young animal then they will never be a true domestic cat. They might spray in the home to mark territory which is incredibly upsetting to the owner but very reassuring to the cat!

This is a tamed serval at A1 Savannahs many years ago. I made the video. He was a quite small serval. Probably a subadult.

They might want to escape the home but you've got to keep them inside because they can't be allowed to wander around outside unsupervised. There have been countless numbers of servals who have escaped homes and ended up being killed on the roads or shot by some policeman in America because they terrify the neighbours. 

The fact that they want to escape the confinement of their tiny space (from their point of view) is indicative of a stressed unhappiness. The problem is that people regard them as exotic pets like domestic cats when they are not. 

And sometimes owners declaw servals which is cruel and immoral. If you want to adopt a serval then at least adopt the entire animal and accept them. But they are quite big; the size of a good size dog but much slenderer. They're bigger than greyhound dogs for example. I'm referring to full-sized adults servals. They will vary in size and the female serval might be about the size of greyhound. But they won't be as placid as a greyhound. Not normally anyway. It does depend upon circumstances and I don't want to generalise.

Martin Stucki formerly A1 Savannahs owner and tame serval. Photo: MikeB.

I can see why owners of servals declaw them because I was slapped by a male serval once because I must've upset him as I was inside his enclosure. He slapped me on the hand and it hurt because their claws are about the size of a good-sized dog. And they hiss and make demands on their owners. You've got to be a dedicated cat lover with plenty of time on your hands. I don't think you can go to work and own serval. You have to be there all the time.

PAGE ON THE SERVAL

I would not like to go to work knowing I had a serval in my living room. You would not know what you would come back to. I just don't think it works out but exceptionally it might, as mentioned, because you may live in a big house in the country with plenty of space around the house and a big garden together with an enclosure outside. You can make compromises and make adjustments to your lifestyle so that your serval lives as contentedly as possible.

Sienna Jones, four, towers over Anubis now but the serval will eventually weigh up to 50lb. Photo: LAURA DALE/CATERS NEWS AGENCY

Click this link if you want to read the story of the serval and the child in the photo above.

But you have to remember that servals need about 10 km² or more to live in normally. If they are confined to a standard home it is going to feel like prison to them. And I believe that this feeling will be there whether they were raised from a new-born kitten in a home or not. I believe that this emotion is in their DNA. They need to roam over 10 km² to hunt. That's their territory. That's their home range. They inherit that trait just to stress the point! It is why they want to escape and they are sneaky 😏.

That is another reason why I don't think it works to have a serval as a pet. But they are popular in America because people consider them to be exotic and people like to possess beautiful things. And don't forget the conservation aspects of it. To keep a serval as a pet I believe undermines conservation of the serval and all wild cats. We should leave them alone, give them space to live, not take their space from them or destroy their habitat. Let them thrive away from people. 

Servals come from Africa.

You cannot say that all cats hate water!

I have to confess that I have become a little bit frustrated and perhaps irritated by a large number of articles on the Internet which state with complete confidence that cats hate water. They are generalising about all cats. You can't generalise like that. You have to drill down and analyse the situation in far more detail.

The originan Van kittens swimming. Please click this link to read about the real Turkish Van

Firstly, you have to decide whether you are referring to cats walking outside in the rain and getting wet or whether you are describing bathing a cat or a cat falling into a bath or pond. When a cat, and I'm referring to a domestic cat in this instance, is submerged in water they will in general dislike it. You can pretty well bank on that. But it depends upon the individual cat as to how much they dislike it. Some may hate it and some may simply put up with it while others will love being in the bath.

Rain

However, you have to compare that situation with being out in the rain. We know that in the UK 99% of cats go outside whenever they like through a cat flap. They might go out in the rain. My cat actually goes out when it's raining sometimes. Clearly the rain does not perturb him. Or he is caught in a downpour and comes in soaking wet. It doesn't worry him particularly. Therefore this is, at least, one cat who does not hate water. He just doesn't mind getting wet.

So among the domestic, random bred cats you will find individual cats who might even like water and those who are ambivalent about it and those who dislike it or even hate it. There is a full spectrum of personalities which affects how they relate to getting wet.

Turkish Van

Then you have the cat breeds. There is quite a lot of talk about the Turkish Van swimming in water and liking it. This is a bit of a myth (see picture and link above). All the current Turkish Van cats in Turkey are random bred cats and they will behave just like random bred cats in America or the UK or anywhere else when it comes to getting wet. The person who started the Turkish Van breed was an English lady and she was driving home from Turkey with some cats and they went for a swim in a lake. This does not mean that all Turkish Van cats like to swim in ponds or lakes.

Maine Coon

I read somewhere that the Maine Coon cat likes to swim as well. This is a myth if you've heard it. In general, purebred cats will be no different to random bread cats in this respect.

The wildcat hybrids are much more likely to like or accept getting wet. Photo: in public domain.

Wild cat hybrids

You have to mention the wild cat hybrids. These cats such as the Savannah and Bengal have serval and Asiatic leopard cat DNA in them respectively to varying degrees depending on their filial. This affects their character and their relationship with water. Both the higher filial variants of these breeds are much more amenable to getting wet and even going into showers than the average random bread or purebred cat. 

This is because the serval and the Asiatic leopard cat live in wetter landscapes. The serval lives in and around watercourses and the Asiatic leopard cat lives in rainforests. They are habituated to wetter landscapes and climates. This has been brought forward in their DNA as a form of memory which has been embedded into the characteristics of these two wild cat hybrid domestic cats. That's why they accept or even like water.

Wild Cats

And then if you're talking about cats in general you must talk about the wild cat species. The tiger loves water and spends a lot of time in it. They are great swimmers and can swim in the open sea for miles. The jaguar in South America loves water and spends time in it as well. The small wild cat species, the fishing cat, spends most of its time in and around watercourses where it, yes, fishes. 

There are other the small cat species such as the flat-headed cat which also spends a lot of time on river banks near water. The Geoffroys' cat dives into water to hunt so once again a small wild cat looking much like the domestic cat likes water. All these species actively get into the water and therefore don't mind being wet. You can never say that "all cats hate water". Please don't do it! Rant over.

African Golden Cat

African golden cat. Photo: Johannes Pfleiderer

The African Golden cat is a small to medium-sized wild cat species living in the African forests. It lives in sub-Saharan areas of the continent on the west side as shown in the map below. In short they live in tropical central and western Africa, including the Congo Republic and Uganda.

Map by Michael based on IUCN Red List

They are adapted to hot humid forests. They sleep in trees during daytime and hunt at dawn and dusk i.e. they are crepuscular like many other wild cat species. They are secretive and little is known about their population size but they are in danger because of extensive habitat destruction occurring throughout Africa. This is increasing as there is an increased need for precious metals for car batteries and high tech devices. This necessitates mining which leads to forest destruction.

Appearance

This cat is about twice as big as a domestic cat. They have variable coats but most often it is a golden colour as indicated by the cat's name. Black and grey cats have also been recorded. The coat is slightly spotted with a paler underside. The tail is medium in length. They are solitary hunters. They stalk prey on the ground and in the trees. Their main diet consists of birds, monkeys and tree-hyraxes in the trees and on the ground they hunt rodents, small antelopes and duikers.

The length of head plus body is 69 cm to 90 cm (25.5 inches to 35.5 inches). Their weight varies between 5 kg and 12 kg which is 11 to 26.5 pounds.

Attacks monkeys

Read about an Africa golden cat attacking monkeys by clicking on this link.

What wild cats live in Georgia?

In my honest opinion, only one wild cat species lives in Georgia, officially, and that is the American bobcat. You may see the odd Puma but they are not meant to be there. That is what the experts say. Perhaps a Florida panther might wander into Georgia but I would doubt it. If someone knows better they can leave a comment, please. If you want to know what wild cats live in America, please click on this link, which tells you which wildcat species live in which country across the planet.

How many cat species are there?

Depending on whose version of taxonomy that you rely on there are between 36-41 species of cat. The variation is because some scientists treat subspecies as species and vice versa. If you treat a species as a subspecies it reduces the number of species. If you treat a subspecies as a species then the number rises. This latter scenario is more common and why Wikipedia list 41 or 40 species of cat.

Personally I rely on the famous book: Wild Cats Of The World by Mel and Fiona Sunquist who list 36 species. On my website (PoC) I list 37. The reason given is stated on this page which is the first of two pages on all the wild cat species.

Note: "species" is not "breed". Species is a scientific term within the science of taxonomy while "breed" is a cat breeder's term. All breeds are one species felis silvestris catus.

You can see a full page written in straightforward English on the wild cat species by clicking this link. Hope this helps.

When is a Wildcat a Wild Cat?

We know that we have to protect and conserve endangered species and many of the wild cat species are endangered.  One of them is the Scottish wildcat. We also know that we have to deal with stray and feral cats. The way we deal with stray and feral cats is very often to euthanise them; in short, in many places they are killed because they are unwanted.

But in some places such as Scotland, the Scottish wildcat mates with stray and feral cats. This is interbreeding between a protected species and their domestic forms. In technical language the Scottish wildcat becomes an introgressed protected mammal. This means the genes from one species move into the gene pool of another species through interbreeding.

This results in hybrid Scottish wildcats.  The questions are:

• How do you tell a hybrid Scottish wildcat from a purebred wild cat?  There are slight differences so it is possible to do this but it's tricky.
• How do you deal with hybrid Scottish Wildcats?  On the one hand the cat is a feral cat to be disliked and on the other hand the cat is an endangered wild cat species albeit somewhat modified genetically. These are "in between cats".

You can see the difficulty facing conservationists and legislators.  People who create law often legislate about how to deal with stray and feral cats.  When they make these laws they have to define what a feral cat is in order to differentiate the feral cat from other species or types of cats.  Can they do it accurately bearing in mind what I have written above? How do conservationists deal with a melange of a species?

Many of the photographs that you see of Scottish Wildcats are almost certainly hybrids.  Many of the photographs that you see of African wildcats are also hybrids.  As I understand it, the North African wildcat is not yet endangered but when the time comes, as it surely will, to assess the African wildcat as endangered then it may be very difficult to know what to do about it because a lot of the cats will be hybrid domestic cats that look like African wildcats.

Americans falling out of love with the car. Good for some cats.

We are told today that Americans don't find car driving sexy anymore. Young Americans prefer an iPad app to a Mustang. For 2014 70% of 19 year-old Americans have driving licenses down from 87% 20 years ago.

The sprawling American suburbs will no longer continue to sprawl.  Suburbs were built around the car.

In San Francisco, Google is planning to move its suburban HQ to the city where it can integrate more with others, meet face to face, bounce of ideas. The coffee shop mentality.

This is a reshaping of the urban environment. If more people live in cities in the future it might be good for the wild cats and bad for the domestic cats.

There should be a reduction in the increased erosion of wild cat species' habitat so a slow down in the interference from people. As for the domestic cat, it means more apartment cats or full-time indoor cats. For me this is not good because I believe that domestic cats should smell the grass sometimes. It makes them happier and connects with their wild cat roots.

Source: Justin Webb -- The Times.

Canada: Two Cougars Killed Because They Killed Two Domestic Cats

I'm not sure that this is ethically correct. This is a story from British Columbia, Canada. Just over the border from the USA is a town called Cranbrook. The map shows you where it is.

Last Friday, a couple of days ago, a resident of the town, Karen King, found two dead cats outside her home. She telephoned the conservation officers who had a look at the dead cats. The conservation officers confirmed that cougars were involved in killing the domestic cats.

"We confirmed that, yes, cougars were involved with killing domestic cats," said Jared Connatty, one of the COs

It seems that the way they worked out that two cougars were involved in the killing of these cats was because they carried out an investigation by asking questions of local residents and the residents confirmed that two cougars had been hanging around the area for a few weeks before there were notified.

So what they did was to deploy tracking hounds who picked up the scent of the cougars at the last known location which led them to two juvenile cougars of around 10 months of age where they were killed (I presume shot). The hounds did not pick up the scent of the mother.

The conservation officers were a bit surprised that the mother was not present because cougar cubs don't leave the mother until about 16 to 18 months of age.

To recap: conservation officers who have a duty to conserve nature meaning wildlife decided that the only course of action was to kill two young mountain lions because two domestic cats that were wandering outside had been killed by them on their estimation. Might it not have been a better idea to have told the people living in the area to keep their domestic cat inside for a while and then to track the cougars. Once they had discovered where they were, to then capture them and relocate them. Perhaps that is impractical, I don't know but I do know that it makes more sense to me because I don't think the actions of these conservation officers was proportionate to the “crime" committed by the mountain lions.

I know it is extremely upsetting if one has lost one's cat companion. However, that might be a risk that one takes when living in Canada knowing full well that there are quite possibly mountain lions in the area. Knowing that, a cat owner therefore puts their cat companion in risk if they let them go outside wandering.

There is no information as to whether the two domestic cats were in fact domestic cats, strays or feral cats. There appears to be no complaint by a cat owner. It would seem that the reason why the conservation officers killed the mountain lions was because whenever a mountain lion wanders into a residential area they are killed on the basis that they are a potential hazard to residents. Once again I find that a poor way of dealing with the situation. If people build residential areas within the distribution of mountain lions then they are knowingly taking the possible risk of a mountain lion walking around their urban environment. On that basis, surely they can devise some method of dealing with mounted lives more humanely so that humans and wild cat can live harmoniously together?

These were young mountain lions and therefore relatively small in size and I will thought unable to genuinely harm people. They could have been dealt with more humanely. That is the point I'm making.

Not Enough! $80m To Save the World's Wild Cats

A global alliance of environmental philanthropists from China, the United Arab Emirates, the US and India have joined together to try and do something about saving the wild cat species, which is entirely admirable but their agreement to provide funding of US$80,000,000 is nowhere near enough.  When set against the profits made from the business of trading and trafficking internationally wild cat species and their body parts, $80,000,000 as a pittance and don't forget you have to complete and beat very devious and very clever businessmen who know how to corrupt officials and politicians in order to get their hands on those precious tiger body parts.

When you think of the wealth of the countries involved their combined funding towards conservation of the wild cat species truly is a very small sum of money.  There are many billionaires living in any one of these countries who could write a cheque for $80,000,000 right now without blinking. It would be like me writing a cheque for £100.

They have guaranteed a 10 year commitment to wild cat conservation so the $80,000,000 funding is spread over 10 years.  That also, I regret to say, is not good enough because species like the tiger have arguably 20 years left in the wild in India before they become extinct in that country in the wild.  Therefore, there is an immediate requirement for substantial funds to resolve the problem.

In addition, the conservation of the Bengal tiger goes well beyond simple funding.  It's about the reserves, which are too small and not managed well enough. There is no point throwing millions of dollars towards the conservation of the Bengal tiger without tackling corruption and management at the same time.  Otherwise all the money will simply go down the drain, the drain of corruption and bad management. Note: it is impossible to stop corruption - too many vested interests and too entrenched.

I almost think that this is a PR exercise but I'll try not to be too cynical.  The objective of the fund is to reduce poaching and international trade, reduce retaliatory killings due to human-animal conflict, reduce the hunting of the prey of the wild cats and try and resolve the unresolvable problem of the loss and fragmentation of the habitat of these cats.  How can anyone resolve the problem of fragmentation of habitat? It is impossible to turn the clock back and create a habitat for a wild cat species that is complete and whole because people are living in parts of this habitat with their farms.  It would mean relocating tens of thousands of people, wouldn't it?

The funding is being channelled through an organisation called Panthera.  The Alliance is called the Panthera Global Alliance. Good luck. I wish I was more optimistic.

Serval, Lynx, Bobcat And Asian Leopard Cat As Pets

Here are some quick notes from a very good book called “Legacy of the Cat" edited by Gloria Stephens about wild cats as pets

Servals may be kept as pets she says but only if they have been raised as cubs.  I disagree with her but that isn't the point.  I would like to add that you have to expect a high energy cat and a serval might get into situations which harms himself.  They will almost certainly spray around your home causing mayhem.  The household should be made cat proof and any toxic chemicals removed.  This includes pesticides of course which are inherently toxic.  Gloria advocates declawing of servals.  I confess I despise that advice.  Sorry Gloria you are wrong but people always declaw their serval pets.  Gloria says:

If they have not been declawed, the claws can destroy your furniture or, worse yet, hurt a human while the cat is “at play"

Yes, I agree with the damage because this is quite a big cat but I disagree with the declawing and in which case it is not viable to keep a serval as a pet - simple....unless you have a very large outside enclosure in which the cat can express natural behavior and there is no declawing! ;)

Serena a serval living in an outside enclosure in OK, USA
having been relinquished by her owner.

As to the lynx she says that most lynx are not suitable as house cats especially if they have not been altered (neutered) or hand raised with care.  If they've not been altered they will spray or mark your house and furniture.  This is what I said about the serval.  This species of wild cat can be temperamental.  This is a medium-sized wild cat species.

As to the Bobcat it is of the same species as the lynx. She says that as with any wildcat, bobcats may not make good pets when they are adults.  The bobcat is between 2 to 3 and a half feet in length.

As to the Asian leopard cat, don't try and turn this cat into a pet because it won't work properly. This cat is solitary, nocturnal and they do not make good pets, so says Gloria.  They are known to be independent and I remember reading an article about this species of small wild cat in the Feline Conservation Federation (FCF) magazine in which the author made it quite clear that he was unable to connect with this cat.  The author had kept his leopard cats in an enclosure.  I remember quite clearly and noted this interesting fact.

I'll leave it there because if you want to read about these species of wild cats you can click on this link and go from there.