Indochinese Leopard Cat (Prionailurus bengalensis bengalensis) at Galloway

This somewhat hard to reach zoo in southwest Scotland recently obtained three young Indochinese leopard cats, having already added the Amur subspecies to the collection some months prior. I spent a long time taking photographs of both subspecies, which I upload now in order to provide a comparison between the two.

I don't care how small or out of the way this zoo is. Any place that is willing to have separate exhibits for two different subspecies of the same small cat gets a AAA rating from me!

Arizona Docent said:

I don't care how small or out of the way this zoo is. Any place that is willing to have separate exhibits for two different subspecies of the same small cat gets a AAA rating from me!

Click to expand...

Compare and contrast the above photo with this one I took the same day of the Amur Cat:



And then this one I took of a Fishing Cat earlier this week at Exmoor Zoo:



I had already been a proponent of the theory that the Amur Cat deserves full specific status as Prionailurus euptilura, but seeing just how much they appear closer in morphology to P.viverrinus as opposed to P.bengalensis has solidified this belief.

Interesting. As it happens, there is currently a new revision of cat taxonomy under way, spearheaded by Kirtchner (spelling?) who I believe did the last revision several years ago. This was reported in the recently mailed issue of Cat News published by the IUCN Cat Specialist Group. When the findings are complete in a year or so they will send out a special issue with the new taxonomy.

And for you real cat fanatics, that issue also has a breif report with photos of the captive african golden cat in Gabon that was alluded to on another thread PeelZoo, currently working in Gabon.