These weasel-like small cats haven’t been documented in the country since 1986. A new study suggests it’s time to reintroduce them.
A few times a year, wildlife officials in Texas receive excited phone calls.
“I just saw something that looks like a really big cat, or maybe a giant weasel,” a caller might say. “Was it a jaguarundi?”
No, they’re not reporting a sighting of a mythical beast like the chupacabra. But they might as well be.
The elusive, secretive jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) is a small, bizarre-looking feline species, not much bigger than a house cat, with weasel-like features, short legs, and an extremely long tail. Native to South and Central America, its range once extended to the southern tip of Texas, but it hasn’t been officially observed in the Lone Star State since 1986. The last one we know of was killed that year by the world’s most fearsome predator: a car.
Texas wildlife officials still dutifully investigate every sighting, and to date they’ve debunked every one of them. The “jaguarundis” people think they saw, biologists explain, were simply house cats or other wild felids — or sometimes just squirrels — out stalking in the dark.
That hasn’t stopped people stopped looking for the jaguarundi in Texas or hoping to spot one. In fact, one group of scientists just finished an exhaustive, decades-long study seeking evidence of the species’ persistence at the northernmost edges of its range, which also extends south all the way to Argentina.
Is the Jaguarundi Extinct in the United States? • The Revelator
A few times a year, wildlife officials in Texas receive excited phone calls.
“I just saw something that looks like a really big cat, or maybe a giant weasel,” a caller might say. “Was it a jaguarundi?”
No, they’re not reporting a sighting of a mythical beast like the chupacabra. But they might as well be.
The elusive, secretive jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi) is a small, bizarre-looking feline species, not much bigger than a house cat, with weasel-like features, short legs, and an extremely long tail. Native to South and Central America, its range once extended to the southern tip of Texas, but it hasn’t been officially observed in the Lone Star State since 1986. The last one we know of was killed that year by the world’s most fearsome predator: a car.
Texas wildlife officials still dutifully investigate every sighting, and to date they’ve debunked every one of them. The “jaguarundis” people think they saw, biologists explain, were simply house cats or other wild felids — or sometimes just squirrels — out stalking in the dark.
That hasn’t stopped people stopped looking for the jaguarundi in Texas or hoping to spot one. In fact, one group of scientists just finished an exhaustive, decades-long study seeking evidence of the species’ persistence at the northernmost edges of its range, which also extends south all the way to Argentina.
Is the Jaguarundi Extinct in the United States? • The Revelator
