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Arizona Docent

margay on the move

Summer Saturday Nights, 2007, when they still had a margay in Small Cat Canyon. Sadly, these cats have been phased out in the AZA and in fact are about to disappear from America altogether. According to the latest issue of the Feline Conservation Federation Journal, there are likely only five margays left in the entire country.
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I
Arizona Docent said:
There is a good breeding program for geoffroy's cats in the private sector. Bobcats will continue to be seen at zoos, even though they are not part of the Felid TAG recommendation. That is because they are part of many zoos native wildlife exhibits and there will always be a steady supply from orphaned rescues without the need to breed.
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With a species as variable as Geoffroy's cat appears to be, I can't help wondering if this is going to end up as being a "split", as has already been proposed with pampas cat, another lovely species now rarer than hens' teeth outside South America.
 
Arizona Docent
The pampas cat split has been refuted and it is now firmly believed to be one species, not three. However, there is a suggestion (not yet proven) that pampas cats and geoffroy cats interbreed in one portion of their range.

In addition to the private U.S. collection of geoffroys, there are some zoos in other parts of the world with them (I have seen them at Le Parc Des Felins, for example). So hopefully they will not become as rare in captivity as the pampas cat.
 
Tim May
Arizona Docent said:
The pampas cat split has been refuted and it is now firmly believed to be one species, not three.
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That’s very interesting; the Handbook of the Mammals of the World (Volume 1) states that Leopardus colocolo pajeros and L. c. braccattus likely represent distinct species.

Arizona Docent said:
However, there is a suggestion (not yet proven) that pampas cats and geoffroy cats interbreed in one portion of their range.
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The Handbook of the Mammals of the World (Volume 1) states that the pampas cat hybridises with the oncilla where their ranges overlap; it's interesting to learn about possible hybrids with Geoffroy's cat too.
 
I
Tim May said:
That’s very interesting; the Handbook of the Mammals of the World (Volume 1) states that Leopardus colocolo pajeros and L. c. braccattus likely represent distinct species.



The Handbook of the Mammals of the World (Volume 1) states that the pampas cat hybridises with the oncilla where their ranges overlap; it's interesting to learn about possible hybrids with Geoffroy's cat too.
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Allowing for the fact that nature is too dynamic to really permit clear cut differentiation between species anyway, it does seem as if work is needed on a comprehensive review of Neotropical felid taxonomy.
 
I
Is it just me or is the general cat diversity in the US zoo world taking a nosedive? I'm sorry to see margays go. I remember that the Santa Ana Zoo used to have a tigrina and the Arizona-Sonora Desert had jagarundis. Why are cat species disappearing from zoo
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One interesting (to me anyway!) sidelight on this thread is that we seem to have two separate common names for Leopardus tigrinus either side of the Atlantic. Having been first introduced to it as the tiger cat, it's now commonly referred to in the UK as oncilla.

More than any other felid that I can think of, including BOTH golden cats and puma, this animal seems to chop and change its common name.
 
Arizona Docent
Well, changing animal names could be a whole other thread. But yes, I first learned of it as an oncilla, so that is the name I use, but I see others calling it tigrina.

The other small south american cat that causes confusion is the guigna. I first learned of it as the kodkod, but now that name is being replaced because research by small cat expert Jim Sanderson (a friend of mine) shows that the natives who originated the name kodkod actually used it to refer to a different small cat. (I forget which species exactly).
 
FBBird
Given that margay & ocelot were in the exotic pet trade in numbers not so very many years ago, what is the non-AZA status of these species? [I even saw a Margay in Harrods [big London store] in 1971].
 
Arizona Docent
I believe it is what I listed in my initial post - five total in U.S.

Sadly, private sector did not coordinate in time to get a good breeding program going like they did with geoffroys (or some big cats like pumas). Incidentally, the Feline Conservation Federation is currently creating a sort of studbook for captive pumas outside the AZA.
 
I
Arizona Docent said:
Well, changing animal names could be a whole other thread. But yes, I first learned of it as an oncilla, so that is the name I use, but I see others calling it tigrina.

The other small south american cat that causes confusion is the guigna. I first learned of it as the kodkod, but now that name is being replaced because research by small cat expert Jim Sanderson (a friend of mine) shows that the natives who originated the name kodkod actually used it to refer to a different small cat. (I forget which species exactly).
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I have sometimes wondered if Leopardus guigna ( I too think of it as being the kodkod!) actually is a species; I've yet to see a photo that doesn't make the animal look rather an immature Geoffroy's cat.

BTW, that was (and is) a cracking photo of a margay.
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus
It is strange that the desert museum once kept this species, I know that you get wild populations of jaguarundi and ocelot up there but I don't think there are margay are there?
 

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