Apr 15, 2025, 05:25 PM IST
Here is a list of eight unique wild cats about whom bet you didn't know.
The black-footed cat weighs only four pounds. It’s almost impossibly cute. And while it’s found in arid regions of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, it is nocturnal and quite rare.
Native to Spain and Portugal, the Iberian lynx had been in precipitous decline for decades. It had been persecuted relentlessly by farmers, and the lynx wasn’t legally protected until the 1970s.
The Pallas’s cat is probably best known from “grumpy cat” memes. Pallas’s cats roam higher elevations of Central Asia, where they are solitary ambush predators.
The fishing cat of Southeast Asia is, as its name might suggest, often found near water. It’s a great swimmer, with webbed feet and claws that never fully retract – the better to snag underwater prey.
This is another Southeast Asian cat that is adapted to semi-aquatic habitats. It’s often found in wetlands, which are unfortunately often imperilled habitats.
The oncilla is one of the smallest wild cats. It is found from Costa Rica to northern Argentina, often at higher elevations than other spotted cat species. It is also quite elusive and rare.
Geoffrey’s cats are found in a wide variety of habitats, including marshland, arid steppe and even desert.
These cats used to live in the South Texas brush country, like the ocelot. The last confirmed sighting of one in Texas was in 1986, in Brownsville.