#he eats pikas mostly and hes pretty specialised for them
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this guy is also called a manul and he is my favourite failson in the world
this guy suuuucksss he can't catch anythingggg
#his name is manul#he lives in mountains and steppes and semideserts throughout asia#unlike a lot of other cats he dens all year in the same manul house#he likes to make himself fussy little beds from furs and feathers and leaves#for an animal this size his home range is also enormous like anywhere from 7-207 km yes really what does he do with all that space?#he can overlap it quite intensely though. in dauria theyre a cat to a square km#he cant run so he hides really well and if he cant hide himself he goes insane and defends with way more ferocity than youd expect#he eats pikas mostly and hes pretty specialised for them#typically what he does is wait by the nest and just fish them out or ambush them which is why hes allowed to be such a failson at stalking#one of the worst things that can happen to him is he can get a type of lice that eats epidermis and hair#steppe wildcats (formally an african wildcat ecotype found in his range) consistently clown on him he really is a sad little man#so in kazakhstan hes even a bigger loser than usual#but even though he looks like a ruffly harlequin in musth pikas really do fear him in a deep and ancestral way. nobody bodies pikas quite s#despite all this and the fact he doesnt tame down he apparently has enough steppe cat ancestry that in a given litter its possible that#that some kittens are genetically tame and can live like normal housecats. unfortunately this is dangerous for them bc both dogs and us can#mistake them for gophers or invasive raccoons and kill them#they are also and this will surprise absolutely nobody one of the genetic forebears of the old type/fairy persian#they probably instinctively stalk due to wildcat and feral admixture but again bad for them because they dont have a crucial adaptation#namely their eyes dont do the slitty slitty thing house cats do to hunt in grass#so they actually dont see that well in thick grass either thus the pika specialization carrying them through millions of years#manuls are So.. they are just So. and now you know more about why hes having such a time :)
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