Tag: animals

Paleontologists Recover Shockingly Intact Saber-Toothed Kitten Buried For 35,000 Years

The find is extraordinary, allowing scientists to directly study the extinct cat’s musculature, fur, head shape, and even its claws and whiskers.

A team in Russia stumbled on the find of the century when they located the stunningly well-preserved remains of a saber-toothed kitten in Siberia.

The kitten, which was found near the Badyarikha River in northeastern Siberia, was about three weeks old when it died, scientists estimate.

Unlike typical finds — a fang here, a mandible or partial skeleton there — this specimen still had its fur, claws, whiskers and muscles, which means scientists have already learned more about the species, Homotherium latidens, than they have with almost any other long-extinct animal.

homotheriumpawpads
Images of the extinct cub’s paws compared to (D), the paw of a 3-week-old lion cub pictured on the bottom right. The Homotherium paw is thicker but less elongated. Credit: Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

While the saber-toothed cub is a true felid, it boasts adaptations unlike any surviving member of the panthera genus.

It has wide paws wrapped in heavy fur, a short tail and a stockier, lower-to-the-ground build than modern lions and tigers. Those adaptations, scientists believe, made it easier for Homotherium latidens to traverse environments with ice and heavy snow.

Its head shape is slightly different, with smaller ears than modern big cats, and its neck is enormous, more than twice as thick as the neck of a comparable three-week-old lion cub which was used for comparison. Likewise, its mouth is capable of opening significantly wider, although the team did not compare it to the jaguar, which has the widest-opening jaw among extant felids.

Homotherium cub
A photograph of the cub, top, and a scan revealing facial, ear and neck structure, below. Credit: Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

The frigid, arid clime of Siberia made it possible for the cub’s body to endure for so long. The team that made the discovery conducted radiocarbon dating that puts the cat at between 35,000 and 37,000 years old, according to reports.

It’s not clear how the cub died, although its species went extinct about 10,000 years ago, likely as a direct result of fewer prey animals in the frigid zones it occupied. Additional bones belonging to the rear of the cub skeleton were encased in a large cube of ice immediately next to the intact upper body.

The cub’s remains were recovered in 2020, but the results of the research team’s analysis were just released on Nov. 14 and published in the journal Nature. The paper’s authors have a lot more to share about the species’ physical characteristics, they noted in the text, and plan to follow up soon with a second paper going into more detail about what they learned from the cat’s intact musculature.

Top image: An artist’s impression of an adult member of homotherium.

Homotherium cub
Credit: Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

Crumbs The Corpulent Cat Is Already Enduring Treadmill Sessions

Crumbs was rescued from a bad situation where people fed him without regard for his health. Now he’s got a lot of work ahead of him as his new caretakers help him lose weight so he can walk on his own again.

Crumbs, the morbidly obese tabby who was rescued from the basement of a Russian hospital last week, is already putting in the work to melt pounds.

That means he’s enduring two things most cats hate — exercise and water. You’ll recall from our earlier post that Crumbs weighs 38 pounds and cannot walk under his own power, so his new caretakers at Matroskin animal rescue in Perm, Russia, have him on a special waterproof treadmill where he gets the benefit of buoyancy while he gets his steps in.

The big guy is not a happy camper in the video, but he’s doing his best.

I’ve heard horror stories about the hospitals in Russia and Ukraine, so if it sounds strange that the staff at a hospital would feed cookies, soup and other inappropriate food to a cat, well, let’s just say it’s not the kind of environment most of us picture when we think “hospital.” (Which is another reason to be grateful for living in the west, where we have it much better than most of us generally realize.)

Hindustan Times article
Non-native English speaking staff at the Hindustan Times may have confused Whiskas the cat food brand with whiskey, the alcoholic beverage, or there may have been a translation error.

Interestingly, a Hindustan Times story about Crumbs claims the hospital employees served whiskey to the obese cat in addition to the junk food, a claim repeated in the headline and article.

That would add another wrinkle to an already ridiculous story, but thankfully it’s not true. Your intrepid friends here at PITB checked the original text and with the help of translation software, determined it used the Russian word for “Whiskas,” as in the cat food, not whiskey. (It probably goes without saying, but never give alcohol to your cat. As little as a teaspoon of whiskey could be fatal.)

So if there’s some small comfort here, it’s that the people who fed Crumbs for so long weren’t completely ignorant to his needs, and it appears he got at least some species-appropriate food.

Crumbs the Cat
Crumbs shortly after he was rescued. Credit: Matroskin animal shelter

‘Best Video Of A Lynx We’ve Ever Captured’: Wild Cat Shows Off For Camera

The trail camera is operated by a team studying the behavior of wolves, but this felid became the main character for a short while, posing majestically right in front of the lens.

Happy Monday! We’re starting the week off in style with an amazing video courtesy of the Voyageurs Wolf Project.

As its name implies, the project is a collaboration between wildlife biologists, ecologists and academics to learn more about wolves, specifically how they survive in the summer months.

While there’s a wealth of research on the behavior of wolves during winter, the pack animals go their separate ways in the warm weather to raise newborn cubs and hunt smaller prey.

Because it’s much more difficult to track individual wolves under the cover of heavy brush compared to following entire packs in the snow, the project relies on a combination of GPS collars and trail cameras. The latter pick up all sorts of wildlife in the Minnesota wilderness, which is how the Voyageurs Wolf Project captured this clear, close-up footage of a stunning medium size wild cat:

That’s lynx canadensis, better known as the Canadian lynx, and the footage is so perfect it’s as if the wild cat said “Ah, a trail camera! I’m gonna sit right here and let the humans see how beautiful and regal I am!”

From its pronounced ear tufts to its snow-soft fur and dark stump of a tail, this lynx is a fantastic example of its species. Canadian lynx are well adapted to the demands of their environs in Canada and the northern US, with heavy coats and soft, wide feet that allow it to traverse snowy landscapes quickly and silently.

They’re famously elusive and difficult to track in the wild, but maybe all we have to do is give the lynx a chance to strut its stuff.

Top image credit Carlos Delgado/Wikimedia Commons.

Latest Banksy Is A Cat In London

The artist says his whimsical animal images are meant to help lower the national temperature after a week of riots and incrimination following the stabbing deaths of three young girls.

UK street artist Banksy has been busy lately, with a new piece of graffiti popping up in London every day for the past six days.

All six new images are animals and the latest is a cat. Sprayed on a billboard in northwest London, the Banksy feline is a black silhouette of a stretching cat and was found this morning.

On Friday, the anonymous artist added a pair of pelicans to a fish shop sign, making it look like the pelicans were eating the fish. That follows a trio of monkeys who appear to be swinging across a bridge, a pair of elephants, a mountain goat, and a howling wolf in the center of a satellite dish, creating the impression that the dish is the moon silhouetting the wolf.

Banksy pelicans
The whimsical animal renderings often show their subjects appearing to interact with their urban environment.

Banksy’s art commands high prices at auction: one piece sold for $25 million, while many others have fetched winning bids well into seven and eight figures.

The wolf piece lasted only hours before a group of men came along and took it. A representative for the artist confirmed to the BBC that the artwork was stolen.

Likewise, the feline was gone by afternoon, removed by contractors who said they were trying to safeguard it.

This isn’t Banksy’s first cat. In 2015 the anonymous artist snuck into the Gaza strip via a tunnel from Egypt and painted a kitten on a fragment of concrete wall that was rubble left over from an Israeli strike. Banksy has also been responsible for at least three other feline-themed pieces of street art, and possibly more.

Banksy Gaza kitten
Banksy’s kitten graffiti in the Gaza strip.

The UK artist is known for using his art to highlight causes, and has made reference to various conflicts around the world, unregulated capitalism, destruction of the environment and distrust of authority, with many of his pieces taking aim at the UK surveillance state. As The Londonist wrote, London is considered one of the most surveilled cities in the world, with between 627,000 and 942,000 CCTV cameras monitoring the public.

However, Banksy’s latest series eschews a political message, his reps told UK media. After a tumultuous week that saw rioting across the country in response to the stabbing deaths of three young girls — and inaccurate news reports about the identity of the attacker — Banksy, his publicist said, merely wants his countrymen to “cheer up.”

Buddy Scores Meowscular Victory Over Vakuum, That Infernal Machine

Vakuum, the terror of many a cat, was put on notice by Buddy’s display of astonishing bravery. If AI and robots ever try to take over the Earth, Buddy is a natural choice to lead the combined armies of cats and men to victory over the machines.

NEW YORK — Buddy the Cat was particularly pleased with himself on Thursday after he successfully scared off one of his mortal enemies by using his powerful roar.

The gray tabby cat had just finished his second Food O’Clock meal of the day and was settling down for 5th Nap when the infernal machine known as Vakuum the Disturberizer encroached upon the Buddesian domicile and began its high-pitched shriek.

While previously he’d hiss at the accursed machine and retreat to the safety of the bedroom, Buddy decided to put his paw down, sources said. It was time to make a stand.

buddyvsvacuum
The heroic sequence of events that led to Vakuum beating a hasty retreat.

Rising up to his full height of almost a foot, Buddy let loose a mighty, blood-curdling roar — and was shocked when Vakuum immediately stopped making its pestiferous racket.

“That machine took one look at me and decided it didn’t want a piece of this,” Buddy said, his primordial pouch jiggling as he flexed. “It helps to be a meowscular and intimidating cat, you know. We jaguars are quite ferocious when we need to be.”

A spokescat for the Yguara Nation of the Americas confirmed that while Buddy is an honorary jaguar and was bestowed the name Kinich Bajo, meaning “Tiny Sun-Eyed One,” he is not in fact an actual jaguar.