Big Cats

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Blue Frost
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 184185Unread post Blue Frost »

Those deer are just throwbacks from the ice age, and before, a lot of animals had fangs then.
Those are not for biting, they would break easy if pulled on, but would hurt a lot.


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Gary Oak
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 184871Unread post Gary Oak »

My doggy got quite alarmed by the screaming. It’s an odd sound for the world’s fourth largest cat. https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2017/09/co ... MgbTFi67i4

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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 184879Unread post Blue Frost »

i would have to investigate, kind of sounds like a woman screaming, or dying more like it.
Up in the mountains here where my grandmother lived something sounded about like that one night, I wanted to go find out what it was, but I had no light, or gun there.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 184882Unread post Gary Oak »

It’s very rare to see one even in British Columbia. I have read that there have been sightings of the supposedly extinct eastern mountain lion in the USA.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 184892Unread post Blue Frost »

I would assume they come up from the Rockies, and up the west coast from California threw Washington state.
We might have a few now in Eastern Kentucky since Elk was brought back in, bears have came back because of that, and little hunting up there now.
Back when i was a kid there was no big game anymore there, people ate everything like that before then.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 185039Unread post Gary Oak »

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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 185102Unread post Blue Frost »

I have read about them in Roman history years ago, the Romans made extent several animals like Rhino, and others.
There is another large type of Lion also on Kilimanjaro with black mains, they go after adult elephants they are so healthy.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 187756Unread post Gary Oak »

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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 187764Unread post Blue Frost »

Marked tree, and marking them so they know who is around :)
awesome creatures.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 187772Unread post Gary Oak »

Seeing a Siberian tiger in the wild is a thrill..... unless you’re actually in the woods with it.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 187776Unread post Mel Gibson »

Beautiful animal! Only around 500 are known to exist in the wild, which to me is shocking! The related Caspian Tiger went extinct a few decades ago.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 187971Unread post Gary Oak »

Here are some photos of a rare black Indian leopard. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... 0G7u20uHTg

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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 188555Unread post Gary Oak »

I’ve never seen golden tigers before. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ScAGsPOBk4



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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 189240Unread post Gary Oak »

Nobody has ever seen a white cougar before. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/anim ... Lrqk#close
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A leucistic cougar walks through southeastern Brazil's Serra dos Órgãos National Park on July 5, 2013. The animal has not been seen since.
Photograph by ICMBio
Animals
Extremely rare white cougar highlights a quirk of the species
“Another white cougar may not appear in my lifetime,” scientist says of unusual young male spotted in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.
3 Minute Read
By Christine Dell'Amore

PUBLISHED December 3, 2020

Move over, black panther—there’s a white cougar in the limelight. Photographs recently resurfaced of a ghostly young male striding through Serra dos Órgãos National Park in southeastern Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Taken in 2013, the photographs were the first confirmed case of a wild cougar with leucism, a genetic mutation that turns most of its body white.

“That shows you how extremely unusual it is,” says Luke Hunter, executive director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Big Cats Program and author of the book Wild Cats of the World. “It’s a striking set of photos.”

Genetic color aberrations, such as albinism and leucism, are relatively common among wild cats, but for unknown reasons, they’re almost unheard of in cougars, a successful predator whose habitat stretches from Canada to Chile, the biggest north-south range of any wild cat. (Read about a “strawberry” leopard found in Africa.)
© NGP, Content may not reflect National Geographic's current map policy.

For instance, melanism, a surplus of the black pigment melanin, occurs in 14 of the 40 known wild cat species, but no one has ever recorded a black cougar—either in captivity or in the wild. As for albinism, in which animals are unable to produce any kind of pigment—hence their pink eyes—there are only two records of such cougars, Hunter says: one at a zoo and one wild animal treed by hunters in the western United States. And outside of the Brazilian cougar, there is only one other known example of a cougar with leucism: An online photo taken at an unknown zoo, Hunter says.

“Another white cougar may not appear in my lifetime,” he says.
Not so black and white

Cougars, also known as pumas or mountain lions, display very little variation in coat colors overall, which are mostly muted, earthy tones of tan and gray.

Hunter says no one knows why color-changing genes are so rare in the species.

“My best guess is that the distant ancestor of pumas was uniformly colored, and that has been maintained in the species ever since,” he says. “But that’s just a consequence of the randomness of mutation, the roll of the genetic dice.” (See pictures of albino and leucistic animals, from squirrels to crayfish.)

After the photos were taken, researchers had hoped to capture the Brazilian cat and analyze its genes, but they haven’t seen it again, according to Cecília Cronemberger de Faria, an environmental analyst for the national park where the cat was sighted.

“The camera trap monitoring project restarted last year, but we still have no new record of this animal or any other odd-colored pumas,” she wrote in a recent email to National Geographic. Cronemberger de Faria is the co-author of the 2018 report in CATnews, a publication of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, that described the animal.

See Why the Mysterious Mountain Lion Is the 'Bigfoot' of Big Cats

Though the lack of cougar color variation probably isn’t linked to any evolutionary advantage or disadvantage, there are theories that black panthers, an umbrella term that refers to any big cat with a dark coat, may benefit from the camouflage of a darker coloring.

For instance, black leopards are plentiful in the dense rainforests of peninsular Malaysia, but not in the deserts of Central Asia, suggesting black coats provide a benefit in dimly lit habitats. (See our exclusive picture of a rare black wild cat seen in Africa.)
A normal lifestyle

The CATnews study authors also raise the possibility that the leucistic cougar could be a sign of inbreeding in the rapidly shrinking Atlantic Forest, where cougar populations are more fragmented. The IUCN lists the conservation status of cougars as “of least concern,” although they are dwindling in many places, including Brazil, due to habitat loss and lack of prey.

But because no other leucistic animals have been sighted, “I doubt that’s at play here,” Hunter says.

The leucistic cougar’s pale coat is likely not a handicap, he adds: As an ambush predator, it would rely on the forest cover to get very close to a small mammal before attacking. Hunting would be more difficult, he notes, if the white cougar were hunting deer in the open plains of the western U.S.

As for its ability to find a mate, he chuckles, “I’m almost certain a female cougar wouldn’t mind.”
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 189242Unread post Blue Frost »

I have seen them really light colored before, but i don't think that white.
Not very good of camouflage is it.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 190457Unread post Gary Oak »

Have you ever heard of a jaguarundi ?
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 190460Unread post Renee »

Gary Oak wrote: February 25th, 2021, 11:03 pm Have you ever heard of a jaguarundi ?
I've seen them in zoos and as taxidermy exhibits in museums. They're built almost like a civet and they look like they could be in the civet family.....I was lucky enough to find the tracks of what probably was a jaguarundi when I was exploring Chichen Itza. The tracks were definitely a cat of some sort but too large for a common house cat and too small for a jaguar, which inhabitants the same range in the Yucatan. Our guide who was very knowledgeable in the flora and fawna of the area, agreed that it was probably a Jaguarundi or an Ocelot.
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 190682Unread post Gary Oak »

A black serval is a very rare black panther. https://m.pawsplanet.me/2682/

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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 191022Unread post Gary Oak »

This black tiger in India apparently is very rare. https://av.paww.tv/extremely-rare-black ... TAlrghSyq8
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Re: Big Cats

Post: # 191471Unread post Gary Oak »

That’s three more additions to the Amur tiger gene pool. In Canada too. Hopefully China is putting a death sentence on anyone who poaches these endangered cats as they did their pandas. That death sentence works over there. https://www.iheartradio.ca/610cktb/1.15 ... ZYnBc_Bfgc
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