Wild cats – 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.

Zoo Visitors Shocked To See Tabby Cat Napping With Lions, Jaguars And Tigers

Zoologists were at a loss to explain how the tabby cat moved effortlessly among the big cats without becoming a light snack.

NEW YORK — Zoo visitors and keepers alike were flabbergasted at the sight of a small gray tabby cat lounging in several big cat enclosures on Monday.

Zoologists and a security team were called to the tiger exhibit at 11:45 am when guests reported the domestic cat had somehow entered the enclosure and had settled down between two adult Bengal tigers for a nap.

“It almost looked like the little cat was demonstrating his form for the tigers,” said Al Farelli, who brought his two girls to the zoo Monday and witnessed the strange event. “Both tigers copied the small cat’s posture and then they all dozed off.”

Buddy the Cat enjoying a late morning nap with tigers Zeus, left, and Achilles, right.

Zookeepers, initially fearing for the tiny cat’s safety, were conferring and were trying to coax the domestic feline toward a keeper entrance when the little cat lifted his head and hissed. Zeus, taking notice, followed the smaller cat’s lead and growled at the keepers.

“Never seen anything like it, and I’ve been working with predators for more than 20 years,” said Wendy Johnson, a senior zookeeper.

Zoo staff breathed a sigh of relief when the feline left the enclosure about an hour later, but were incredulous when they received guest reports that the cat had popped up again in Jaguar Jungle.

“We’re just standing there and admiring these majestic big cats when a gray kitty comes padding into the enclosure with his tail up, as if he didn’t have a care in the world,” said Melissa Matthews, a Manhattanite who was at the park with friends.

“Then when the jaguars saw him I gasped because I thought he was about to become an hors d’oeuvre for one of them,” she said, shuddering. “But they chuffed happily, exchanged paw bumps with the little guy and groomed him.”

Once again, the tabby cat settled down for a nap, laying on top of a jaguar named Ixchel.

Buddy finally made his way to the lion exhibit by late afternoon, settling down to nap with a lion named Colossus.

Meanwhile a New York man arrived at the zoo, explaining he’d seen clips of the bizarre scene on social media and recognized the feline as his cat, Buddy.

“He’s always doing this!” the man told zoo staff. “There was the time leopards almost ate him on the Masi Mara, the incident in the Amazon when he took ayahuasca with jaguar shamans, and the debacle when he tried to make himself king of the rusty spotted cats.”

As of late Monday the man was seen arguing with the silver tabby and trying to bribe him out of the enclosure with an impressive snack spread.

Amazing Cats: Ocelots Love Trees, Water And Calvin Klein’s Obsession For Men

Ocelots, one of the western hemisphere’s most adaptable cat species, are often mistaken for young jaguars.

In 1999 biologists from the Dallas Zoo were lending a hand on a project to monitor and protect America’s ocelots, who primarily range in southern Texas.

With limited resources, the team was trying to keep the wild cats in a protected area and get them to use paths where camera traps had been installed. One tried and true method was to use scents, but what could attract ocelots?

“Sort of on a lark, one of our research assistants produced a bottle of Obsession,” Dallas Zoo’s Cynthia Bennett said at the time.

The felines loved it. Members of the research team watched astounded as the scent magically transformed previously ignored objects into items of sudden fascination.

The cats happily rubbed their cheeks and bodies against anything sprayed with the stuff.

“It´s a little embarrassing to watch, actually,” Bennett said. “It does make you wonder what´s in the perfume.”

(It’s probably civetone, a synthetic version of a pheromone produced by civets used as a binder in the Calvin Klein scent.)

In addition to their predilection for cologne, ocelots are known for enjoying water, hunting by twilight, and napping in trees. The medium-size felids, who weigh up to 40 pounds in the wild, are also easily recognizable by their big eyes, the dark rings that surround them, and the way those markings become twin stripes that sweep over their foreheads.

Perhaps most striking are their large, wavy rosettes, which sometimes get them confused for young jaguars. In several indigenous South American languages, ocelots and jaguars share a name or have very similar names.

An ocelot kitten. After a gestation period of about three months, ocelot moms give birth to as many as three kittens. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

An ocelot resting in a tree. Like other leopardus species, ocelots are proficient climbers. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

Ocelots have another quality that may lead people to confuse them with jaguars: they’re fond of water and they’re considered strong swimmers. That allows them to master their habitats, which often include rivers winding through rainforests and mangrove swamps.

The resourceful cats are adept predators on land and they can also pluck fish out of rivers.

An ocelot going for a dip. Credit: yellowlime_des/Reddit

Ocelots are categorized as a species of “least concern” by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) but that doesn’t mean they’re thriving. Like pumas, the species is adaptable and can survive in varied surroundings. Still, ocelots contend with the same pressures other species experience, including habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting and poaching.

And while they can’t get enough of Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men, maybe that’s a good thing.

According to zookeepers and wild cat experts, ocelots have a uniquely funky body odor which is amplified by their prodigious scent-marking. They want everyone to know where their territory is.

For zookeepers, the cats’ Obsession obsession could pull double duty as olfactory enrichment in their habitat — and a way to mitigate the stink.

Name: Ocelot (leopardus pardalis)
Weight: Up to 40 pounds, with limited sexual dimorphism (males are slightly larger)
Lifespan: Up to 20 years in captivity
Activity: Crepscular, nocturnal
Habitat: Claims territory in places where prey, water and dense ground cover are plentiful but the species is adaptable and survives in varied biomes

Want more Amazing Cats?

Amazing Cats: The ‘Fire Tiger’ Is The Stuff Of Legend
Amazing Cats: The Adorable Colocolo, Feline Of The Pampas
Amazing Cats: The Sunda Clouded Leopard
Amazing Cats: The Mysterious Marbled Cat
Amazing Cats: The Rusty Spotted Cat
Amazing Cats: The Jaguar, ‘He Who Kills With One Bound’
Amazing Cats: The Puma, Adaptable Survivor

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.