Not today! Rock Cavy in one of the old cages & the other was signed that the oncilla have been moved & the cage is empty!
Not today! Rock Cavy in one of the old cages & the other was signed that the oncilla have been moved & the cage is empty!
Oooh, excellent! Good to hear the Rock Cavy have arrived.
My hunch (and I have no scientific evidence, it is just a hunch) is that the proposed split of oncilla into two species will go the same way as the proposed split of pampas cat into three species. That is to say, nothing will come of it and it will remain one species.
At the risk of hijacking this thread (but I blame TLD - he started it 
)...
I do have one photo from years ago of an oncilla that was briefly displayed here in the states at Santa Ana Zoo. I am posting it next to the one from Parc Felins and you can see there is a marked color difference. If the split that I personally refuse to recognize is considered valid, would these be the two different varieties?
)...I do have one photo from years ago of an oncilla that was briefly displayed here in the states at Santa Ana Zoo. I am posting it next to the one from Parc Felins and you can see there is a marked color difference. If the split that I personally refuse to recognize is considered valid, would these be the two different varieties?
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They would indeed.
I am personally pretty convinced that the Oncilla and Tigrina merit specific seperation; in particular by the fact that the two taxa do not interbreed where they overlap despite the fact that the Oncilla is known to interbreed with the Pampas Cat, whilst the Tigrina has been recorded as interbreeding heavily with the Geoffroy's Cat, creating an overlap zone where the population of both species show some level of mixed ancestry. This rather suggests that the Oncilla, Tigrina and Geoffroy's Cat may represent a species cline, possibly also including the three debated Pampas taxa.
The other persuasive point is that genetically, the Oncilla and Tigrina lineages appear to have split earlier, and demonstrate greater difference, than the split between Geoffroy's Cat and the Pampas taxa. As such, keeping these two taxa included in one species would suggest the Geoffroy's Cat and the Pampas taxa should also be conspecific.
I am personally pretty convinced that the Oncilla and Tigrina merit specific seperation; in particular by the fact that the two taxa do not interbreed where they overlap despite the fact that the Oncilla is known to interbreed with the Pampas Cat, whilst the Tigrina has been recorded as interbreeding heavily with the Geoffroy's Cat, creating an overlap zone where the population of both species show some level of mixed ancestry. This rather suggests that the Oncilla, Tigrina and Geoffroy's Cat may represent a species cline, possibly also including the three debated Pampas taxa.
The other persuasive point is that genetically, the Oncilla and Tigrina lineages appear to have split earlier, and demonstrate greater difference, than the split between Geoffroy's Cat and the Pampas taxa. As such, keeping these two taxa included in one species would suggest the Geoffroy's Cat and the Pampas taxa should also be conspecific.