Not the best photo I've taken but my patience paid off on my 2nd visit to Exmoor. Pleased to get a glimpse of them and they look very pretty little cats
Not the best photo I\'ve taken but my patience paid off on my 2nd visit to Exmoor. Pleased to get a glimpse of them and they look very pretty little cats
I'm not sure of Age but they are small, I wouldn't say there was much in size difference between these and the Rusty Spotted Cat.
I was told by someone that they are F1 & F2 and they are hoping to breed from them.
They are very difficult to see though and they have access to two outside enclosures which are heavily covered. I went on 2nd August and wasn't impressed that I didn't catch a proper look at them so went again on the 6th late on in the day and was lucky enough to see them and they seemed to be pretty active.
Basically the chronology goes something like the following: 2,2 animals were imported into Tierpark Berlin from Avilon in late 2012. Each animal is captive-bred but from recent wild blood, with all four animals being unrelated. After a quarantine period, 1,1 animals went onshow at Tierpark Berlin and 1,1 remained offshow for a time before being sent to Exmoor. After another quarantine period, this pair has finally gone onshow.
In the intervening time, the pair at Tierpark Berlin has bred and produced 1,1 kittens. As such, considering all involved animals are unrelated, if the Exmoor pair breed I would not be surprised if any kittens were paired off with the Tierpark kittens.
And here is a shot I took of one of the aforementioned Tierpark kittens, which will rather efficiently show the difference in appearance between an adult and a kitten of this taxon.
Interesting they have small solid spots. The ones that are commonly seen (is it Indochinese maybe) have rosettes like a leopard. And then the amur ones have almost no spotting.
Does the leopard cat have the most variable coat pattern of all the spotted cats?
Indeed - 1,1 were the adult animals and 1,1 their offspring. I believe the offspring have since left but I do not believe their destination is on-record yet.
This, of course, assumes that you did not see a total of *six* animals when you visited, in which case I suspect a further import must have taken place, as the initial import was definitely 2,2 and the animals at Exmoor definitely came from Tierpark.
TLD tierpark had two pairs plus kittens when I visited! And exmoor already had their pair so it must have been three pairs imported! Berlins kittens were destined for another European collection but I won't name it here!
