Leopard cat

Name and taxonomy

Robert Kerr gave the species its first scientific name, Felis bengalensis, in 1792. His specimen came from Bengal, and the region gave the cat its species name. Over the following decades naturalists described about 20 more specimens under new names, from Nepal, China, Bhutan and Siberia. In 1939 Reginald Pocock placed all of them in the genus Prionailurus. The English name refers to the spotted coat, which resembles the pattern of a leopard.

A revision of cat taxonomy in 2017 split the group into two species. The mainland leopard cat, P. bengalensis, keeps the old name and lives on the Asian continent. The Sunda leopard cat, P. javanensis, lives on Java, Bali, Borneo, Sumatra and several Philippine islands. The mainland species has two subspecies. P. b. bengalensis lives in the south, from Pakistan to China. P. b. euptilura lives in the Russian Far East, Manchuria, Korea, Taiwan and on the Japanese islands of Tsushima and Iriomote.

GBIF lists names for it in many languages, including Bengalkatze in German and chat du Bengale in French. In Japan it is a yamaneko, a mountain cat. Its Chinese name in Taiwan means stone tiger.

Evolution and relatives

The cat family began to diversify in Asia during the Miocene. Nuclear DNA puts that radiation at 14.45 to 8.38 million years ago. The genus Prionailurus traces back to a common ancestor that lived between 8.16 and 4.53 million years ago. The rusty-spotted cat branched off first, then the flat-headed cat. The fishing cat and the leopard cat separated last, about 4.31 to 1.74 million years ago. The fishing cat is therefore the leopard cat's closest living relative.

Tissue samples from 39 leopard cats revealed three genetic groups. A northern group covers Korea, Taiwan, the Russian Far East and the two Japanese islands. Two southern groups cover Southeast Asia, and one of them stands well apart from the rest. The southern cats show more genetic variety than the northern ones. Bones from Neolithic villages in central China show that people kept leopard cats about 5,000 years ago.

Appearance

An adult weighs about 3 to 7 kilograms. Head and body measure 38.8 to 66 centimetres in the tropics, and northern cats reach 75 cm. The tail adds 17.2 to 31 cm, which is about half the body length. Shoulder height is about 41 cm. Tropical cats can weigh as little as 0.55 kg, while cats in Siberia reach 7.1 kg.

The coat is yellowish brown in the south and pale silver grey in the north. The chest and belly are white. Black spots of varying size cover the body and legs, and two to four rows of longer spots run along the spine. Depending on the region, the marks can be solid spots, rosettes, or broken streaks. The ears are rounded and black behind, each with a white spot in the centre. The tail carries a few faint rings and ends in a black tip.

Northern cats grow a fuller winter coat and put on fat before the cold months. The toes carry clear webbing between them. Males and females look alike, and no size difference between the sexes has been documented. The many regional forms differ so much in colour and size that early naturalists took them for separate species.

Habitat and range

The leopard cat lives in continental South, Southeast and East Asia. Its range covers eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, much of India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. From there it continues through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China to Korea and the Russian Far East. In Japan it survives only on Tsushima and Iriomote islands. Pleistocene fossils show that it once lived more widely in the Japanese archipelago.

It lives in evergreen rainforest at sea level and in deciduous and conifer forest in the Himalayan foothills above 1,000 metres. A camera trap in Makalu-Barun National Park photographed one at 3,254 metres in 2009. The altitude record stands at 4,474 metres, in the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area in 2012. The cat avoids ground that holds more than 10 centimetres of snow. ADW reports that it cannot stand air temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius, which may explain its absence from central India.

It accepts farmland with cover, including oil palm and sugar cane plantations. In Russia it keeps to river valleys and ravine forests. Radio collars on 20 cats in Thailand's Phu Khiao Wildlife Sanctuary showed male home ranges of 2.2 to 28.9 square kilometres. Female ranges there ran from 4.4 to 37.1 km2. A home range usually holds both forest and running water. GBIF holds records from 28 countries, though some of those are zoo animals.

Diet and hunting

Rats and mice are the main food across most of the range. The cat also takes tree shrews, hares, birds, lizards, snakes, frogs, bats and insects. Large individuals can catch hares and young deer. Near villages it takes poultry, and it eats eggs and some grass. In the Philippines, house mice and rice-field rats make up most of its diet.

It hunts by stalking, then a short rush, then a bite. Unlike many small cats, it does not toy with a caught animal. It keeps its claws locked in until the prey dies. Wikipedia links this habit to the many birds it catches, which would fly off if released. It swims well and takes aquatic prey when it meets it. It climbs to reach roosting birds and bats. In thorny scrub near the ground it eats more rats than it does in tall forest.

Behaviour and social life

Leopard cats live alone outside the breeding season. Each cat roams a home range that it marks with scent. A male's range overlaps the ranges of several females. ADW gives a typical range of 2.5 to 5.4 square kilometres, with some above 10 km2.

Most hunting happens at night, but some cats are active by day. The cat rests in trees or in dense thorny undergrowth. It climbs with ease and spends much time above ground, though it hunts mostly on the floor. It can swim but seldom chooses to. ADW calls it an exceptional swimmer, which may explain how it reached offshore islands.

It is hard to see in the wild. It is small, quiet, and patterned to blend into leaf litter. When it meets a person it usually runs. Even so, it lives on the edges of villages and fields, where rats are common. Like other cats, it probably spends much of the day asleep.

Communication and senses

Both sexes mark their territory. They spray urine, leave faeces in open places, rub their heads on objects and scratch. These marks probably tell neighbours who lives where and which females are ready to mate. The cat is mostly silent. Its calls resemble those of a house cat: it purrs, mews and cries.

Like other cats, it probably relies on night vision, hearing and smell to find prey in the dark. The white spots on the backs of the ears may help kittens follow their mother in dim light. The white streaks from eye to nose and the dark stripes to the ears seem to break up the outline of the face.

Reproduction and life cycle

The breeding season follows the climate. In the tropics kittens arrive all year round. In the north, cats mate between January and March and give birth in spring, around May. Little is known about courtship, because the cat is nocturnal and scarce.

Gestation lasts 65 to 72 days by ADW's account, or 60 to 70 days in other reports. A litter holds one to four kittens, usually two or three. The mother gives birth in a hollow tree, a rock crevice or a burrow. Newborns weigh 75 to 130 grams, have fur, and open their eyes within 10 to 15 days. They double their weight in two weeks. At four weeks the permanent canines break through and the kittens start on meat. If a litter dies, the mother can conceive again within four to five months.

Young cats become independent at about eight months. Captive females can breed from one year old and often have a first litter at 13 to 14 months. Both sexes are fully mature at about 18 months. A wild leopard cat lives about 4 years on average. In captivity some have reached 20 years.

Predators and threats

Leopards, tigers and other large cats kill leopard cats. Large birds of prey take them too. Night habits, small size and a taste for trees probably reduce that risk.

People are the main threat. In China the cat was hunted for its fur on a huge scale. Between 1984 and 1989 China exported about 200,000 skins a year. A 1989 survey found more than 800,000 skins held by traders. The European Union banned imports in 1988, and Japan then took 50,000 skins in 1989. Trade has fallen since, but hunting for fur, meat and the pet trade continues across most of the range.

Surveys of four markets in Myanmar between 1991 and 2006 counted body parts from at least 443 cats. Three of those markets sit on the borders with China and Thailand. Farmers kill the cat as a poultry thief. Cars kill cats on Tsushima: 122 died on the island's roads between 1992 and 2022. On Tsushima a growing deer herd strips the undergrowth where the cat hunts rodents.

Population and conservation

The IUCN Red List has rated the species Least Concern since 2002. It is widespread, and the total population is well over 50,000. Numbers are falling. CITES Appendix II regulates international trade in the cat and its parts. The United States has listed it as Endangered under its Endangered Species Act since 1976, so import and sale need permits. Hong Kong protects it under its Wild Animals Protection Ordinance, and Myanmar gives it full legal protection.

The Tsushima cat is Critically Endangered on Japan's national red list. Japan has funded a recovery programme for it since 1995. A canal cut the island's population in two, and the southern group was thought lost until a sighting in 2007. A captive breeding programme runs, but no cats have yet returned to the wild.

Wikipedia cites a study that ranks the leopard cat as the second most useful umbrella species for habitat protection, after the Asian elephant. Protecting its habitat shelters many other species at the same time. Its presence is also read as a sign of a healthy ecosystem.

Relationship with humans

The leopard cat was the first cat that people in China kept, about 5,000 years ago. Domestic cats from the Middle East replaced it some time before the Tang dynasty. Today the cat lives close to farms and villages, where it hunts rats in rice fields and plantations. That service protects crops and stored grain and probably limits rodent-borne disease. The same cat raids hen houses, and villagers kill it in return.

Its skin and meat are sold in China and Japan. Live cats enter the pet trade. Breeders cross it with house cats to make the Bengal breed, which reached cat shows in the 1970s. By the fifth generation the hybrid carries the leopard cat pattern, and owners usually need no licence. The early crosses stay with breeders or in specialist homes.

The wild cat carries feline immunodeficiency virus and can pass it to house cats. It does not attack people and flees when met. On Tsushima and Iriomote the cat has become a symbol of island identity.

In culture and myth

Villagers on Iriomote call the cat yamapikaryaa, a dialect word for something that shines in the mountains. Islanders have known the cat for generations and tell stories about it at local events. In 2010 the town of Taketomi chose a pupil's drawing of the cat as its mascot, named Pikaryaa. The town declared an Iriomote Wild Cat Day in 2015. In 2016 it signed a partnership with Tsushima, whose own cat serves as that island's unofficial mascot.

In Taiwan people call it the money cat, because its round dark spots look like coins. In Neolithic China it was the cat of the village long before the domestic cat arrived. The Bengal breed now carries its pattern into homes around the world. Many spirit-animal and tattoo pages that mention the leopard cat seem to describe the leopard instead, so those stories are left aside here.