#prionailurus

[tigerleopardlion]

Indochinese Leopard Cat | Niran Anurakpongsathorn

[xanderomeister]

MY TOP 10 CATS LIST

* this is an assortment, not a ranking; I don't like being forced to pick favourites

Relevant: animals, monster hunter, red dwarf, delicious in dungeon, heartstopper

Cats chosen for various, sometimes drastically different, reasons. This is like, a really stupid list to make, admitedly.

1. Izutsumi

Comment: She is a cat, and not happy about it. Izutsumi has some really funny panels/shots, although there are more serious narrative aspects to her character too, among others the nature of her soul and mind as a werebeast. Props to Ryōko Kui for cooking up some really interesting worldbuilding concepts in Dunmeshi in general.

2. Jaguar

Comment: The muscly, meaty jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag.... Honestly just a really cool cat in vibes. They are also really adaptable, and it shows in the range of places they inhabited historically, not just presently. Also possibly hoping for reintroductions in the US. I really like wildcats in general, but jaguars really strike me among big cats.

3. Charlie Spring

Comment: Reportedly catlike, has meowed at least once. Not the main thing that strikes me about him though. I think he is a well realised and compelling character in the comic and series. Admitedly he is not the most relatable in his experiences, but he is far from unlikeable. Charlie and Nick are also a really sweet couple.

4. Xenosmilus hodsonae (no common name)

Comment: The maddest (real) cat. This is one of the sabretoothed cats found in North America during the Pleistocene, alongside the famous Smilodon and Homotherium. Unlike these two, Xenosmilus is seemingly limited in distrubution, only known insofar from Florida iirc. It had insane teeth; the huge incisors stand out especially. It was also very heavily built among cats, and likely used its paws to wrestle down prey. Gnarly beast, love it.

5. Barioth

Comment: 90 screeching tons of cat-shaped wyvern. It has a lot of really weird details and cool design influences which I really like. Barioth is a very good fight imo, or at least one with considerable potential. It's also got a sick title for its BGM track: the Subzero White Knight. Overall, one of my favourite monsters in the whole of Monster Hunter.

6. Cat

Comment: A cat 3 million years in the making. My favourite Red Dwarf character, with Lister coming at a close second. I especially like his portrayal in the first two seasons. He just roams about yowling and doing all sorts of random bullshit. Basically, the worst parts of a cat in human form (though, he is a LITERAL cat by descent so... he's a cat.)

6. Flat headed cat

Comment: I found out about this little freak this year, and I love it. Shoutout to the other Prionailurus cats, who tend to look less weird overall. Interestingly it is semiaquatic and eats fish. For further clarification, this is indeed an adult cat shown here; they are one of the smallest species out there.

8. Pete

Comment: The least "catlike" cat. I assumed he was like a bulldog or something when I was little, but cat does make sense (yknow, cat and mouse, with one towering over the other). I like how ugly, clumsy and brutish he is, but at the same time amusingly pathetic in some situations. I have only fairly recently begun looking into Mickey Mouse shorts; I mostly grew up with Donald Duck comics.

9. Jones

Comment: The only other cat on this list in space. He is one of the few pleasant things in Alien, as the film is quite grisly otherwise. Fortunately, he is safe. I really don't have much to say about him given his fairly small role beyond a few jumpscare antics. I moreso just like Alien because it is such a multilayered and interesting film.

10. Eurasian lnx

Comment: My country's only wildcat. Lynx are pretty peculiar looking with their ear tufts, bobtail and long legs. They aren't huge among cats as a whole, but their size is still distinctive. At the same time they are normal in a sense because of their widespreadness. Btw they climb, which is something I remember every now and again and become amazed at.

HONORABLE MENTION: Felynes

Forgot about these guys as a whole, somehow, but I like them. They are a very distinct part of Monster Hunter, and pretty charming overall. Also not able to embed more images, sadly.

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Phylogenetic wild cat tournament

Leopard cat lineage

Genus: Prionailurus

Depth: 10 (9 wins away from championship)

Two pleasantly weird-looking cats, both living around water in Southeast Asia and preying mostly on fish. (My favourite sentence of flat-headed cat's wikipedia page: "They have been observed to wash objects, raccoon-style.") The fishing cat shows the standard Prionailurus spots, while the flat-headed cat is the only non-spotted member of the genus. (It's still agouti, not solid colored - in domestic cat terms, this pattern would be called ticked tabby.)

Fishing cat

Flat-headed cat

[snototter]

An Asian Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) in Borneo, Indonesia

by Mike Prince

[byelacey]

Pyrs seem like they'd be more than big enough to bork, or even boof. Your canine cloud's young but full-grown? Still growing? How deep is his voice, and is that something that can...fill out as he ages? I just look at him and think 'it seems like he'd boof'. A big, boofy cotton ball.

he borks and boofs i suppose! he’s got many different types of bark from high-pitched baby barking when he’s feeling bratty to full-on murder barking to tell trespassers he means business! and he’s so loud lol he rattles the walls.

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Rusty Spotted Cat (Prionailurus Rubiginosus)

kingdomoffunnymemes.com

[mirtadraws]

Some of my favourites from Inktober 2023. I decided to draw 1 cat species per day, in a couple of different styles. You can find all of them under the Inktober tag!

[polyglot-thought]

[Thai, Indonesian, Malay->English]

Cute animal I found out existed today: The Flat-headed Cat (Prionailurus planiceps)

And they are endangered 😢

They are native to southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo.

Since I am a language blog, I will show you how to refer to Prionailurus planiceps in the official languages of each respective country (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia) 😄 with Color Coded Translations

—

Thai

แมวป่าหัวแบน

maew bpàa hŭua baen

flat-headed (wild) cat

—

Indonesian

kucing liar kecil

little wild cat

—

Malay

kucing hutan

forest/jungle cat

—

Please correct me if I made a mistake

[tigerleopardlion]

Mainland Leopard Cat | Chris Dutle [Center for Animal Research and Education]

[felinefractious]

[Image Source]

Bengal Cat Coats Are Less Wild Than They Look, Genetic Study Finds [Stanford Medicine]

Bengal cats are prized for their appearance; the exotically marbled and spotted coats of these domestic pets make them look like small, sleek jungle cats. But the origin of those coats — assumed to come from the genes of Asian leopard cats that were bred with house cats — turns out to be less exotic.

Stanford Medicine researchers, in collaboration with Bengal cat breeders, have discovered that the Bengal cats’ iridescent sheen and leopard-like patterns can be traced to domestic cat genes that were aggressively selected for after the cats were bred with wild cats.

“Most of the DNA changes that underlie the unique appearance of the Bengal cat breed have always been present in domestic cats,” said Gregory Barsh, MD, PhD, an emeritus professor of genetics. “It was really the power of breeding that brought them out.”

For a study published online March 25 in Current Biology, Barsh and his colleagues analyzed genes collected from nearly 1,000 Bengal cats over the course of 15 years. Barsh is the senior author of the paper, and senior scientist Christopher Kaelin, PhD, is the lead author.

The results shed light not only on the Bengal cat’s coat but also help answer broader questions about how appearance is encoded in genetics and how different genes work together to yield colors, patterns and physical features.

Wild Origins

Barsh and his colleagues, including Kaelin, use cats and other animals to study the genetics of physical features. In previous studies, they identified genes responsible for the color coat variation in tabby cats and for the unique markings on the Abyssinian cat.

“The big-picture question is how genetic variation leads to variation in appearance,” Barsh said.

“This is a question that has all kinds of implications for different species, but we think that cats offer an especially tractable way to study it.”

From the 1960s through the 1980s, breeders, led by biologist Jean Mills, crossed the wild Asian leopard cat species Prionailurus bengalensis with domestic cats to create a new, visually striking cat breed. Over many generations, the cats with the desired physical characteristics and temperaments were progressively selected and bred. By 1986, the Bengal cat was recognized as its own new breed by the International Cat Association.

Barsh and Kaelin saw Bengals — with their recent genetic origin and unique appearance — as a particularly interesting way to study how genetic variation causes diversity in form, color and pattern. In 2008, they began reaching out to cat breeders, attending cat shows, and collecting cheek swabs and photographs of Bengal cats.

Genetic Surprises

The Stanford Medicine team suspected that Bengal cats might give them an accessible way to probe the genetics of wild cat colors and patterns that had evolved naturally. But after sequencing 947 Bengal cat genomes, they found something surprising: There were no parts of the wild Asian leopard cat genomes that were found in all Bengal cats.

“Nearly every Bengal cat breeder and owner has this idea that the distinctive look of the domestic Bengal cat must have come from leopard cats,” Barsh said. “Our work suggests that’s not the case.”

Instead, the genetic signatures suggested that the unique appearance of Bengals was a result of variations in genes that had already been present in domestic cats.

The team found something similar when they looked specifically at “glitter”: About 60% of all Bengal cats have particularly soft, iridescent fur that glitters like gold in the sunlight. A mutation in the gene Fgfr2, they showed, is responsible for glitter and comes not from leopard cats but from domestic cats. Glitter and the underlying Fgfr2 mutation are nearly specific to Bengal cats. Interestingly, the mutation reduces the activity of the protein encoded by Fgfr2, rather than rendering it inactive as many mutations do. This sheds light on how variations in genes can cause subtle changes in appearance, the researchers said.

Finally, Barsh and Kaelin’s group analyzed the genetics of “charcoal” Bengals, a rare subset of the breed with darker coloring. They uncovered a leopard cat gene linked to the charcoal color, but only when it was combined with domestic cat genome. The leopard cat gene, known as Asip, essentially doesn’t work as well when it’s mixed with the domestic genes — a phenomenon known as genomic incompatibility. So, in leopard cats, Asip doesn’t cause charcoal coloring, but the same gene in domestic cats does.

“Hybridization between different species can happen naturally and is responsible for the small amount of Neandertal DNA found in many human genomes," Barsh explained. “But the wild leopard cat and the domestic cat are more different from each other than humans are from chimpanzees, and it’s remarkable to see how DNA from these distantly related species can exist and work together in a popular companion animal.”

A Boost for Biology and Breeders

A better understanding of the genetic origins of Bengal cat traits is already helping Bengal breeders fine-tune the way they breed animals to create new colors and patterns. Over the past 15 years, Barsh and Kaelin have worked closely with Bengal cat organizations and given talks at cat shows. They often return ancestry and genetic data to owners to help guide their breeding.

“Breeders are extremely interested in our data,” Kaelin said. “They not only want to contribute their cats’ DNA but they also want to be involved and help analyze data and hear about our results. It’s been a great collaboration and a true example of citizen science.”

The researchers say there are lessons to be learned in just how powerful artificial selection can be, as the Bengal cat coats could probably have been selected for without the help of the Asian leopard cat.

“People have this idea that we have to get access to these distantly related animals to breed beautiful individuals and designer animals,” Barsh said. “But it turns out all the diversity was already there waiting in the domestic cat genome.”

[Read Article @ Source]

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Phylogenetic wild cat tournament

Leopard cat lineage

Genus: Prionailurus

Depth: 11 (10 wins away from championship)

After its win, here is a new challenger for the sunda leopard cat: the fishing cat! This little cat is much more robust than the leopard cat species, with smaller ears and eyes, shorter legs and overall larger size (it's the biggest species of the genus). The name is not a coincidence: the fishing cat is adapted to living in and around water, and its main prey is indeed fish.

Sunda leopard cat:

Fishing cat:

[snototter]

A Fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) in Osaka Tennoji Zoo, Japan

by Jin Kemoole

[amnhnyc]

Monday mood? The rusty-spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus). Known as the “hummingbird of cats,” this species is one of the world’s smallest felines, reaching weights of only 3.5 lbs (1.6 kg). Primarily nocturnal, this cat uses its large eyes to hunt under the cover of darkness. It can be spotted in parts of Southeast Asia including India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Photo: Cloudtail the Snow Leopard, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, flickr #cats #catstagram #catsofinstagram #nature #wildlife #amazinganimals https://www.instagram.com/p/CqAzQX_rrSU/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Rarest Animals In The World That Are On The Brink Of Extinction

Fishing Cat (Prionailurus Viverrinus)

Wikimedia Commons

[uncharismatic-fauna]

trick or treat ^__^

You get a fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus)!

[mirtadraws]

Inktober #5

fishing cat for day #5 !

I'm drawing wild cats this inktober. Which cat species should I do next?