cat photography – Pain In The Bud

‘White Ghost’: Amateur Photog Gets First-Ever Shots Of White Iberian Lynx

Photographer Angel Hidalgo thought the color was a trail camera malfunction until he saw the incredible feline for himself.

For the first time in history, a white Iberian lynx has been photographed.

A Spanish man who works in a factory by day and photographs wildlife as a hobby was behind the camera for the unprecedented shots.

It wasn’t easy.

Angel Hidalgo told National Geographic that first spotted fleeting images of the extraordinarily rare feline on one of his camera traps, but he was skeptical.

“I couldn’t believe it,” the 29-year-old said. “I thought it was a camera effect, and from then on, I dedicated myself to the search for the lynx. I’m still in shock.”

While hiking in late October, Hidalgo saw the “ghost cat” with his own eyes and quickly took a handful of shots and a short video before the cat vanished.

The Iberian lynx, as its name indicates, is native to Spain and a small range in Portugal. The cats call mountain ranges like Sierra Morena and Montes de Toledo home.

The white color morph is due to leucism, not albinism: the difference is the former causes only partial loss of pigmentation, and the eyes are unaffected.

In the video footage, the cat sits calmly and regards Hidalgo for about 15 seconds before blinking and turning its head. It’s a fleeting but fascinating look at an animal that most of us will never have the opportunity to see in the flesh.

Hidalgo won’t say where he encountered the white lynx, which is a smart move in an age when bored rich kids in places like Dubai can throw money at wildlife poachers and help themselves to the rarest and most vulnerable wildlife.

Because they know the authorities in their countries won’t bother them, the sons of oil oligarchs and emirs openly flaunt their wild “pet” collections: Instagram and TikTok host thousands of photos and videos of young men and women posing with cheetahs, lions and tigers, with the cats often riding shotgun in hypercars from Lamborghini, Ferrari and McLaren.

We hope the location remains a secret for the sake of the wild cat and because the Iberian lynx is a conservation success story. The species was on the brink of extinction in the 1990s and now has a healthy breeding population that numbers in the thousands.

Wordless Wednesday: The Glorious Amur Tiger

Today we’re admiring photos of the majestic Amur (Siberian) tiger, a species that has been pulled back from the brink of extinction thanks to the hard work of conservationists.

The Amur tiger, panthera tigris altaica, is the largest subspecies of the largest cat in the world.

Click an image in the gallery to view a higher resolution version:

All images in the gallery above via Wikimedia Commons. Header image via Pexels.

Happy National Black Cat Day!

House cats, jaguars, leopards, Servals and jaguarundi are just some of the species that have melanistic (black) color morphs.

Everyone knows house cats, jaguars and leopards can be voids, but did you know other cats have black color morphs too?

The Asian golden cat, the Serval, jaguarundi, Margay, kodkod, Geoffrey’s cat, oncilla, Pampas cat, and bobcat all have melanistic variants.

Unfortunately when it comes to house cats, research supports the longstanding claim that black cats are adopted at lower rates, and are euthanized in greater numbers, than other felines. Part of that can be chalked up to superstition. It’s also due in part to the fact that black cats are more difficult to photograph.

But as these photos prove, all you need is some decent ambient light, smart framing and maybe a bit of shadow/highlight correction to help bring out a black cat’s natural features.

Melanistic oncilla. Credit: Ignacio Yufera

Image credits: Top two rows via Pexels, with photographers listed in the captions. All other photos via Wikimedia Commons. Last image (melanistic oncilla) credit Ignacio Yufera

Facebook Is Flooded With Hoax Posts About A Supposed Black Mountain Lion

The purveyors of the deceptive posts want you to click, share and argue with other users about the veracity of the photos.

Not only is he the rarest puma in existence, he’s more well-traveled than most humans.

The mountain lion in question has a black coat, unprecedented for his species, and has been popping up all over Facebook. He’s photographed from the passenger seat of a truck cab, his tail in an unbothered curl, crouched amid the brush near a rural road.

Some posters claim they spotted the formidable feline in Mississippi. Others attribute the image to a sister-in-law who lives near Houston or a daughter in Charleston. A user in Louisiana claimed they took the photograph near the bayou, while another places the cat in Wyoming and claims he’s the first-ever documented “shadow cougar.” (Our friend Leah of Catwoods drew our attention to the images last week after seeing posts placing the cat in the south.)

In case it isn’t obvious, all the claims are full of it.

There is no such thing as a melanistic (black) mountain lion, and the big cat in the photo has the physical characteristics of a leopard, an animal that is not native to this hemisphere, let alone this continent.

The real story here is that Facebook remains a fountain of misinformation and Meta (its parent company) doesn’t care. Unscrupulous users will do anything to get attention and the clicks that come with it, and the average Facebook user is happy to indulge them, driving clicks by resharing the hoax content and juicing its algorithmic value by engaging in endless arguments with fellow users about the veracity and provenance of the photos.

Alleged big cat sightings are perfect for this sort of thing because they pique people’s natural curiosity, there’s a whiff of danger — especially when the poster claims the animal was spotted locally — and most people aren’t aware of telltale differences between cat species.

In many ways, the blurrier and more indeterminate the photo, the better: like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, the idea of phantom cats is most fertile in the imagination.

These days you don’t even need a photo to get in on the click-baiting action. I asked Gemini to create an image of a jaguar-like big cat walking along a rural road at night, and this is what the LLM gave me:

In the image prompt, I asked it to make it look like an amateur photo taken with a midrange smartphone camera, but if we really wanted to get artistic, it’s simple enough to add noise, maybe some motion blur and digital artefacts to the image to make it look more like an authentically crappy, rushed shot of an unexpected animal.

Here’s the result of some simple efforts to en-crapify the “photo” further:

To give the image urgency and encourage people to engage with it, I can make it local and claim it was recent. Errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation add a nice seasoning of authenticity, along for feigned concern for others as the reason for sharing:

“Folks – just wanted to tell ya’ll to mind your pets an make sure of you’re surroundings bc theres a big cat on the lose!! my cousins GF took thus friday nite on Route 9 a few mile’s south of Dennies. a real honest to goodness black panther! BE SAFE!!!”

There’s a dangerous animal on the loose in your area! You know what you have to do: share it so others can bring their pets safely inside and stop their kids from playing outdoors, at least until it looks like the predator has moved on.

It’s your duty as a good American!

Since it doesn’t seem to matter if a quick reverse image search can settle the question of where an image came from, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone lifts the above image and text.

At the very least, maybe a few people who do think to run a search will find their way here, read about the hoax, and save themselves from getting drawn into online debates about the existence of cryptid cats.