Sunda cat

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Sunda cat
Sunda cat, photo from Borneo

Sunda cat, photo from Borneo

Systematics
Order : Predators (Carnivora)
Subordination : Feline (Feliformia)
Family : Cats (Felidae)
Subfamily : Small cats (Felinae)
Genre : Old cats ( Prionailurus )
Type : Sunda cat
Scientific name
Prionailurus javanensis
( Desmarest , 1816)

The sunda cat ( Prionailurus javanensis ) is a small cat species that occurs on Sumatra , Borneo , Java and the Philippine islands of Palawan , Negros , Cebu and Panay and possibly also on the Malay Peninsula . With the exception of the population on Palawan, the Sunda cats may have only been introduced by humans on the other Philippine islands. The cats on the Malay Peninsula, which are very variable in color, could be hybrids with the Bengal cat ( Prionailurus bengalensis ).

features

The distribution area of ​​the sunda cat

Sunda cats are smaller than the Bengal cats from mainland Asia and only reach a third to half the weight of their relatives. The body and limbs are patterned with elongated, dark brown or black spots. Sometimes the spots are also small and rounded. Characteristic are four parallel dark longitudinal stripes in the neck.

Today two subspecies are recognized:

  • Prionailurus javanensis javanensis (Desmarest, 1816) from Java and Bali, which has a brown-gray basic color.
  • Prionailurus javanensis sumatranus (Horsfield, 1821) from Sumatra, Borneo, Palawan, Negros, Cebu and Panay, which has a variable, yellow-brown, light orange-brown, deer-colored or gray-yellow basic color.

Systematics

The sunda cat was first described in 1816 by the French zoologist Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest under the scientific name Felis javanensis . The spotted small cats of the Malay Archipelago were later assigned to the Bengal cat ( Prionailurus bengalensis ). In a study published in 2014 on the phylogeography and genetics of some Southeast Asian cats, however, the authors came to the conclusion that the Bengal cats of the Malay archipelago are genetically distinctly different from the mainland populations and are more closely related to the fishing cat ( Prionailurus viverrinus ) than to the Mainland Bengal Cat populations. The mainland and island populations of the Bengal cat are said to have genetically separated from each other about 2 million years ago. The findings were confirmed in another study published in February 2017. The IUCN's Cat Specialist Group therefore separated the island populations of the Bengal cat from the mainland populations as an independent species in a revision of the cat system published in January 2017 and gave it the scientific name Prionailurus javanensis .

Way of life

Sunda cats are largely nocturnal. They can climb well and have been located in Sabah's oil palm plantations on the hunt for rodents and beetles up to 4 m above the ground. In Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Sabah examined Sundakatzen had 1.93 to 3.8 km 2 large areas. The territories of the males are larger and overlap those of one or more females. In the dry season, males roamed 1.7 km on average in one night, while females traveled an average of 1.27 km. In the rainy season, both sexes move about a kilometer through the area. Males move faster than females, and both sexes are more active in the first half of the night than in the second.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Kitchener AC, Breitenmoser-Würsten Ch., Eizirik E., Gentry A., Werdelin L., Wilting A., Yamaguchi N., Abramov AV, Christiansen P., Driscoll C., Duckworth JW, Johnson W. ., Luo S.-J., Meijaard E., O'Donoghue P., Sanderson J., Seymour K., Bruford M., Groves C., Hoffmann M., Nowell K., Timmons Z. & Tobe S. 2017. A revised taxonomy of the Felidae. The final report of the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group. Cat News Special Issue 11, 80 pp. Pp. 26-28.
  2. ^ A b Mel E. Sunquist & Fiona C. Sunquist: Family Felidae (Cats). Pp. 142-143 in Don E. Wilson , Russell A. Mittermeier : Handbook of the Mammals of the World - Volume 1 Carnivores. Lynx Editions, 2009, ISBN 978-84-96553-49-1
  3. ↑ a b Patel RP, Wutke S., Lenz D., Mukherjee S., Ramakrishnan U., Veron G., Fickel J., Wilting A. & Förster DW 2017. Genetic structure and phylogeography of the Leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) inferred from mitochondrial genomes. Journal of Heredity esx017. doi: 10.1093 / jhered / esx017
  4. ^ Desmarest AG 1816. Chat. Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle 6, 73-123.
  5. ↑ LD & O'Brien SJ 2014. Sympatric Asian felid phylogeography reveals a major Indochinese-Sundaic divergence . Molecular Ecology 23, 2072-2092. doi: 10.1111 / mec.12716
  6. ↑ Rajaratnam, R., Sunquist, M., Rajaratnam, L., Ambu, L. (2007) Diet and habitat selection of the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis borneoensis) in an agricultural landscape in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo . Journal of Tropical Ecology 23: 209-217
  7. ^ Rajaratnam, R. (2000) Ecology of the leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis in Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia . PhD Thesis, Universiti Kabangsaan Malaysia.