Northern tiger cat
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Northern tiger cat ( Leopardus tigrinus ) |
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The northern tiger cat ( Leopardus tigrinus ), also called the northern ocelot cat , is a South American species of cat . In her homeland she is known as Tigrillo or Oncilla . It is one of the smallest South American cats and is closely related to the southern tiger cat ( Leopardus guttulus ) and the eastern ocelot cat ( Leopardus emiliae ).
The northern tiger cat is classified as Endangered by the IUCN .
Appearance
The tiger cat is a small type of cat and measures around 45 to 55 centimeters from the head to the end of the body, plus a 24 to 34.5 centimeter long tail. The tiger cat is slightly larger than the house cat , but weighs a little less with an average of 2.45 kilograms. The hind foot length is 96 to 165 mm and the ears are 35 to 45 mm long. The fur is relatively rough. In terms of fur, as the misleading name suggests, it does not resemble the striated tiger . In shape and with its longitudinal drawing, however, it is so similar to the long-tailed cat ( Leopardus wiedii ) that the two species can easily be confused. The hair on the neck of the tiger cat is directed backwards, but in the long-tailed cat it is directed forward. The basic color on the back is dark brown, orange-brown to yellow-brown or gray-brown. The fur on the sides of the body becomes lighter. The ventral side is whitish or light gray. On the sides of the body there are small to medium-sized rosettes that combine to form oblique stripes. The edges of the rosettes are black or very dark brown. The inside of the rosette is dark brown or orange-brown. Outwardly, the sexes cannot be distinguished. The northern tiger cat often develops melanism , that is, giving birth to completely black cats.
Unlike most other cat species, the ocelot cat only has 36 chromosomes.
Distribution area and habitat
The northern tiger cat is native to Costa Rica and northern South America from Ecuador via Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana to the Brazilian state of Amapá in the east. There are also occurrences in Peru and northwest Argentina. It is not yet known whether the species also occurs in Bolivia and Panama. The northern tiger cat usually lives in forests. The altitude distribution of the tiger cat ranges from sea level to altitudes of 3,200 meters, some individuals have also been detected at altitudes of 4500 to 4800 meters.
Deforestation means that tiger cats have less and less living space available. In Colombia , large areas of subtropical forests and cloud forests have been cleared to create coffee plantations there. However, tiger cats tolerate human proximity to a certain extent.
Food and subsistence
The feeding behavior of the tiger cat in the wild has not yet been adequately described. The stomach contents of a female examined in Costa Rica contained two white-footed mice , a pocket mouse and a shrew . Another female's stomach contained a finch . Basically, tiger cats beat relatively small prey animals that live mainly on the ground. The tiger cat is able to climb, but mostly stays on the ground.
Reproduction
Most of the information about the reproductive behavior of tiger cats comes from captive animals. In these, the oestrus lasted three to nine days, with older cats having a shorter oestrus. The gestation period is 75 days, which is an unusually long time for a cat of this size. Tiger cats usually only give birth to one cub. These weighed between 92 and 134 grams at birth. Despite the long gestation period and the small size of a litter, the young of tiger cats develop very slowly compared to other cats. The young animals only open their eyes between the eighth and the 17th day. The milk teeth only erupt on the 15th to 21st day of life, and they start eating solid food between the 38th and 56th day. In comparison, the young of domestic cats at this age are already able to hunt mice. Young tiger cats are not suckled by the mother until they are around three months old, and only at eleven months have they reached the size of an adult animal.
It is not known at what age tiger cats reach sexual maturity. However, observations on captured animals indicate that this occurs relatively late.
Life expectancy
Tiger cats kept in human care reached the age of 17 years.
Systematics and taxonomy
The tiger cat was scientifically described for the first time in 1775 by the German naturalist Johann Christian von Schreber under the name Felis tigrinus . The genus Leopardus was introduced in 1842 by the British zoologist John Edward Gray .
In 2013, DNA studies revealed that there is a northern and a southern population of the tiger cat, between which no gene exchange has taken place for 100,000 years. As a result, the southern population became an independent species, which was given the species name Leopardus guttulus (German southern tiger cat).
The IUCN's Cat Specialist Group differentiates between two subspecies of the northern tiger cat in its 2017 revision of the cat system:
- Leopardus tigrinus tigrinus in northern South America and
- Leopardus tigrinus oncilla in Costa Rica
The latter could also be an independent species.According to a study published in 1999, the genetic distance between the South American and Central American tiger cat populations is greater than that between the ocelot ( Leopardus pardalis ) and the long-tailed cat ( Leopardus wiedii ), as well as the small-spotted cat ( Leopardus geoffroyi ) and the Chilean forest cat ( Leopardus guigna ). However, no specimens from northwestern South America (Colombia, Venezuela) were included in the investigation.
Two Brazilian scientists found three morpho groups from different areas of South America in morphological comparisons of 250 tiger cat skulls. The southern one is congruent with the distribution area of Leopardus guttulus , the northern corresponds to Leopardus tigrinus ( Terra typica is Cayenne ) and the name Leopardus emiliae , which was introduced in 1914 by the English zoologist Oldfield Thomas , was revalidated for the morpho group occurring in the northeast of Brazil .
Tiger cat and human
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Tiger cats were hunted very heavily for their fur. Unambiguous statistical data for the trade in tiger cat skins are not available because the fur can easily be confused with that of the long-tailed cat . Between 1976 and 1982, however, tiger cat skins were one of the four small cat species whose fur was most commonly marketed. In 1982 alone, 69,613 skins of this type were traded, significantly more than that of the little spotted cat , whose equally spotted fur had been bought more frequently up to then. In 1983 the number of skins sold rose to 84,493 and then fell rapidly. In 1985 only 2,052 skins were left in stores. Until 1983 Paraguay was the main exporter of tiger cat fur. The majority of these were probably illegal imports from neighboring South American countries that were resold via Paraguay . In 1984, on the other hand, Bolivia was the main exporter. For Bolivia there is so far no evidence that tiger cats even occur in the territory of Bolivia.
In 1986 the European Union banned the import of all tiger cat skins. In 1989, on the initiative of the Federal Republic of Germany, the tiger cat was included in Appendix 1 of the Washington Convention on the Protection of Species (CITES).
literature
- Mel Sunquist, Fiona Sunquist: Wild Cats of the World . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002, ISBN 0-226-77999-8 (English).
Individual evidence
- ^ A b AC Kitchener, C. Breitenmoser-Würsten, E. Eizirik, A. Gentry, L. Werdelin, A. Wilting, N. Yamaguchi, AV Abramov, P. Christiansen, C. Driscoll, JW Duckworth, W. Johnson, S.-J. Luo, E. Meijaard, P. O'Donoghue, J. Sanderson, K. Seymour, M. Bruford, C. Groves, M. Hoffmann, K. Nowell, Z. Timmons, S. Tobe: A revised taxonomy of the Felidae . The final report of the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group. In: Cat News. Special Issue 11, 2017, pp. 63–64.
- ↑ Leopardus tigrinus in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2016 Posted by: Payan, E. & de Oliveira, T., 2016. Retrieved on 20 May 2020th
- ↑ a b c Fabio Oliveira do Nascimento & Anderson Feijó: Taxonomic revision of The Tigrina Leopardus tigrinus (Schreber, 1775) species group (carnivora, felidae). Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia - Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo, Volume 57 (19): 231-264, 2017, ISSN 0031-1049 PDF
- ↑ The tame wild ones and the wild tame ones, Maria Falkena-Röhrle, ISBN 3-8391-0383-5
- ↑ Sunquist, p. 32
- ↑ sunquist, p. 132
- ^ Sunquist, p. 132
- ↑ Tatiane C. Trigo, Alexsandra Schneider, Tadeu G. de Oliveira, Livia M. Lehugeur, Leandro Silveira, Thales RO Freitas & Eduardo Eizirik: Molecular Data Reveal Complex Hybridization and a Cryptic Species of Neotropical Wild Cat . Current Biology (2013), doi: 10.1016 / j.cub.2013.10.046
- ↑ Gang Li, Brian W. Davis, Eduardo Eizirik and William J. Murphy: Phylogenomic evidence for ancient hybridization in the genomes of living cats (Felidae) . Genome Research 26, 11-11. DOI: 10.1101 / gr.186668.114
- ^ Johnson, WE; Pecon-Slattery, J .; Eizirik, E .; Kim, JH; Raymond, MM; Bonacic, C .; Cambre, R .; Crawshaw, P .; Nunes, A .; Seuánez, HN; Moreira, MAM; Seymour, KL; Simon, F .; Swanson, W. & O'Brien, SJ 1999. Disparate phylogeographic patterns of molecular genetic variation in four closely related South American small cat species. Molecular Ecology, 8: S79-S94.
- ^ Sunquist, p. 132
- ^ Sunquist, p. 132
Web links
- Species profile Leopardus tigrinus . IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group (English).
- The ocelot cat . In: World of Cats .