Newsday Tuesday – Have You Heard of the Chinese Mountain Cat?

In recent days, a team of researchers from China, Malaysia, Russia, and the US learned something new about cats. The domestic cat does not share any DNA with the Chinese Mountain Cat.

I hadn’t even heard of the Chinese Mountain Cat (also known as the Chinese Desert Cat), and that’s not unusual since it’s considered the least known wild cat in the world and one of the top 5 most vulnerable.

Which cats are most endangered and declining? According to some sources, it’s the Borneo Bay Cat from Indonesia, the Andean Cat that lives in the Andes, the Liberian Lynx in the Mediterranean (there are only 156 left), and the Flat-headed Cat from Asia.

Having done this research, I then wondered how many wild species of cat there are. According to the experts, forty. When I checked stats to see how many of those cats are vulnerable or endangered, the tables showed that pretty much all of them are. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

So where did the modern day housecat come from? The conclusion is that they evolved solely from the African Wildcat.

 

This entry was posted in About Cats. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *