Here is a potted history of the big cats by a student of the wild cats – me. It is not meant to be overly heavy 😉. The big cats are grouped together because they can all roar. The puma (not one of the big cats) is bigger than the leopard but cannot roar …
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 …
No, cheetahs don’t live in India but they used to four hundred years ago when they were common in western and central India south of the Ganges, where its range mirrored that of its major prey animal at that time, the blackbuck. In fact the cheetah was widely distributed throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and …
It is hoped that a Roman mosaic from the 4th-century of a leopard attacking an antelope, which was discovered in the grounds of Dewlish House in Dorset in 1974, will stay in the country. It is the sort of historical work of art which should not be allowed to go overseas and which should …
There is an cat interesting story from sciencemag.org. It concerns Madagascar’s mysterious, small wild cat, which looks very much like a large, domestic tabby cat. This is unsurprising because the experts believe that around 1000 years ago (900 C.E.) or earlier Arabian ships may have transported domestic cats to Madagascar. There appears to be …
Why are snow leopards called ‘ounce’? It is quite a long and tortuous journey from Greek via Latin together with some ad hoc adjustments to the word and in my view a mispronunciation to end up with the word “ounce”.
No one knows when cheetahs were first discovered because there is no record of that unique moment in the history of this much admired wild cat species. This is because it happened so long ago. Cheetahs have been on the planet for far longer than “anatomically modern Homo sapiens1” (modern humans). It is said …
Here are some stories of tiger hunting from the past; from a time when it was considered “normal” to hunt tigers for the fun of it. They are extracts from books in the public domain and courtesy of Google – thanks Google. I find these stories both fascinating and very disturbing. When looking back …
