Fish cat
| Fish cat | ||||||||||||
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Fish cat ( Prionailurus viverrinus ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Prionailurus viverrinus | ||||||||||||
| ( Bennett , 1833) |
The fish cat ( Prionailurus viverrinus ) is a wild type of cat from South Asia that lives mainly in wetlands . The fish cat has been on the IUCN's Red List of Endangered Species since 2016 .
The fish cat is related to the bengal cat , but much larger.
features
The fur of the fish cat is olive gray with darker stripes over the shoulders and in the neck, which merge into elongated spots on the sides and legs. The belly is white. The chest and throat are decorated with bands of dark spots. Your head is long and narrow. It cannot retract its claws completely and has less webbed feet than the Bengal cat . With a body weight of 5–16 kg and a head-torso length of 57–78 cm, it is about twice as big as a house cat . Their tail is relatively short at 20–30 cm. The shoulder height is about 35 cm.
The average lifespan of females is given as 12.6 years, that of males as 10 years.
Distribution and habitat
The very fragmented distribution area of the fish cat stretches from the Terai region in southern Nepal and northeast India via Bangladesh to Sri Lanka , Thailand and Cambodia . There is current evidence from Pakistan , but not from the Malay Peninsula , Sumatra , Laos and Vietnam . Fish cats were already rare on the island of Java in the 1990s and were only found in mangrove forests in the northwest of the island.
They prefer to be close to bodies of water such as swamps, lakes and very slow-flowing rivers, but not rivers and streams with strong currents.
Way of life
Unlike most cats, fish cats often swim. In her search for prey, she not only crouches on the bank and fetches the fish out of the water with a targeted blow, but also often wades around in shallow waters in search of crabs and other aquatic animals or preyed on fish by diving and swimming, and she also searches the water for frogs , crustaceans and water snails . Occasionally it also hunts on land and then prey on mice, birds and insects, and rarely mammals up to the size of a lamb.
Existence and endangerment
The worldwide population of the fish cat is estimated to be less than 10,000 adults . The population is declining, therefore the species is classified as endangered (Vulnerable) . The total population is estimated to be at least 30% smaller than at the beginning of the 1990s as a result of habitat loss . The fishing cat is listed in Appendix II of the Washington Convention on the Protection of Species .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Pocock, RI (1939): The fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Mammalia. - Volume 1. Taylor and Francis, London.
- ^ Sunquist, M., Sunquist, F. (2002): Wild Cats of the World . University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Pages 241-245.
- ↑ Fishing Cat | San Diego Zoo Animals & Plants. Retrieved July 30, 2018 .
- ↑ Fishing Cat | San Diego Zoo Animals & Plants. Retrieved July 30, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c d Mukherjee, S .; Appel, A .; Duckworth, JW; Sanderson, J .; Dahal, S .; Willcox, DHA; Herranz Muñoz, V .; Malla, G .; Ratnayaka, A .; Kantimahanti, M .; Thudugala, A .; Thaung R .; & Rahman, H. (2016): Prionailurus viverrinus . In: IUCN 2016. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2016.2.
- ↑ Melisch, R., Asmoro, PB, Lubis, IR and Kusumawardhani, L. (1996): Distribution and status of the Fishing Cat ( Prionailurus viverrinus rhizophoreus Sody, 1936) in West Java, Indonesia (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 3.4 MB). Faunistic treatises. Staatliches Museum für Tierkunde Dresden 20 (17): 311–319.
- ↑ Nowell, K., Jackson, P. (1996): Fishing Cat Prionailurus viverrinus ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Wild Cats: status survey and conservation action plan . IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group, Gland, Switzerland.
literature
- Duckworth, JW, Shepherd, CR, Semiadi, G., Schauenberg, P., Sanderson, S., Roberton, SI, O'Brien, TG, Maddox, T., Linkie, M., Holden, J., Brickle, NW (2009): Does the Fishing Cat Prionailurus viverrinus inhabit Sumatra? Cat News 51: 4-9.
- Sanderson, J. (2009): How the fishing cat came to occur in Sumatra . Cat News 50: 6-9.
Web links
- Species profile fish cat; IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group in English
- Fishing Cat Working Group in English