A Michael Broad Blog
The experts have concluded after careful analysis that there is a new subspecies of Oncilla on the planet and they’ve called it the ‘clouded tiger-cat’. This story is about the reclassification taxonomically of an existing species of small wild cat so that it has been ‘carved out’ of an existing classification when it was …
It might be useful to quickly go over the difference between ‘cat breeds’ and ‘cat species’. It’s quite as subtle difference but a very important one. In 1758 the modern idea of classifying all the world’s animals and plants began. Humans like to create some order in the world (I am afraid they’ve failed …
The fisher cat is a dog-like carnivore that’s called a cat and which is an omnivore. Nothing makes sense. Logic has been turned on its head. The problem is that the fisher cat has been badly named and there is a very good argument to reconsider it. Taxonomically, i.e. its scientific classification among all …
The problem with this question is that it is badly formulated. Therefore, it doesn’t really make sense which means it is difficult to answer. If it was well formulated it would still be difficult to answer (for me at least) 😉. I’ll have a stab at it. But it will be an overview. Above: …
Here is an Infographic which shows you how the cat family is currently classified by the experts. It is called ‘taxonomy’. The difficulty with the classification of cats is that it is still, despite DNA testing, somewhat in flux. The task is not quite finished because I see different results. It is more settled …
Do domestic cats come from big cats? The answer has to be no. The reason is because the big cats split off and formed their own path millions of years ago. This is a discussion about the taxonomy of the cats. And it’s about the evolution of all the cats. They all have the …
Nearly all domestic cats are not a breed of cat but a species of cat. The purebred cats, those cats which are selectively bred by cat breeders, are various breeds of cat of which there are about 104 maximum. Some of these breeds no longer exist or have failed to be successful. There are …
There is a major difference between ‘breed’ and ‘species’. The domestic cat is a species of cat and in the family of cats is called Felidae. There are about 36 species of cat, all of which are wild except for the domestic cat, which is a domesticated African-Asian wildcat. A cat breed is a …
