Scottish Wild Cats

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Wild Cats

 

Wild cat: Felis sylvestris

 

Distribution: Highlands of Scotland; possibly a few in the Scottish

borders and Northumberland. Also Spain, Germany, Poland and parts of

southern Europe.

 

Habitat: in Scotland inhabits remote forests, hill areas and grouse moors.

 

Description: resembles a domestic tabby but is slightly larger with

longer, softer fur and broader head. Black or grey body stripes (a

tabby is blotched). Bushy tail with a blunt, black, rounded tip

(domestic cats' tails are longer and pointed).

 

Size: male measures about 90cm from nose to tail-tip; female slightly

smaller.

 

Life-span: about 12 years.

 

Food: rabbits, hares, small rodents, birds and insects form the main

diet; sometimes squirrels and deer fawns are taken.

 

The wild cat was once common over most of the British Isles, but it is

now only found in Scotland. Although it looks very much like a

domestic tabby cat, it is very fierce and almost impossible to tame,

even if brought up from a tiny kitten.

 

 

Wild Cat Habits

 

Territory; wild cats usually hunt alone and lead solitary lives. The

male marks out a territory of about 100 hectares (1 hectare = 2

football pitches) with urine, faeces and scratch-marks on trees; it

has glands on its feet which secrete scent. Wild cats do not bury

their droppings as domestic cats do.

 

The territory is fiercely defended from other males, especially if the

male has a mate. It will leave its territory, however, to find a mate

in early spring. If there is plenty of food, wild cats sometimes form

groups to hunt their prey and to defend a territory from others.

 

Daily Life; the wild cat is a carnivore, hunting mainly at dawn and

dusk; it either lies in ambush to pounce on its prey, or stalks it

until fairly close and then rushes in to attack.

 

The day is usually spent resting. On a sunny day, a wild cat will bask

on a tree branch or rocky outcrop where it can keep an eye on its

surroundings. It may also have a den where there is a good view of the

area around, either in a rock pile, under a tree stump or in an old

fox earth or badger sett.

 

Breeding; wild cats mate in late February or early March. Courtship is

very noisy with a lot of screeching, wailing and howling! Several

males may call all through the night in an attempt to attract a female.

 

Gestation (the time during which the female is pregnant) lasts about

65 days. The female prepares a nest in a rocky cleft or hollow tree

and gives birth to, on average, 4 kittens. The babies are blind at

birth and open their eyes at about 10 days old. They are suckled by

the mother for about 30 days and leave the den after 4 - 5 weeks. The

kittens spend a lot of time playing and start learning to hunt with

their mother from around 9 weeks old. The father takes no part in

rearing his young. By 10 months of age, the kittens are almost fully

grown but do not breed until the following year.

 

Even at a very young age, wild cat kittens are ferocious, spitting at,

scratching and biting any intruders.

 

Normally, only one litter is born a year. Wild cats interbreed easily

with feral cats (domestic cats that fend for themselves in the wild)

and hybrids (the results of a cross between a wild cat and a feral

cat) will often produce a second litter in late summer. Feral cats

tend to revert to the tabby form and can cause confusion when

identifying wild cats. Interbreeding may have caused an apparent

reduction in size of wild cats during this century and not all wild

cats are distinctively striped as a 'pure' wild cat should be.

 

 

Wild Cats and Man

 

The wild cat once lived over all of Britain, except Ireland, as well

as Europe. As the forests were felled over the centuries it was forced

to live in the more remote areas.

 

Thousands of wild cats were killed in the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries by gamekeepers protecting the high populations of

grouse, partridges and pheasant that were bred on shooting estates.

 

Fortunately for the wild cat, attitudes to wildlife have changed and

today it is looked upon as a useful and attractive animal rather than

vermin, and it is protected in many areas.

 

Since the 1920s wild cats have been spreading slowly again, although

interbreeding with feral cats has probably artificially increased

their numbers. An extension in Scotland's coniferous forests may have

helped the wild cat to recover.

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Eurasian Lynx

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

(Redirected from European Lynx)

 

 

Eurasian lynx

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Carnivora

Family: Felidae

Genus: Lynx

Species: L. lynx

 

Binomial name

Lynx lynx

(Linnaeus, 1758)

The Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx) is a medium-sized cat of European and Siberian

forests, where it is one of the major predators. It has yellow fur with black

markings; the pattern of the fur is variable: lynxes with heavily spotted fur

may exist close to conspecifics with plain fur.

 

 

 

 

 

Lynxes prey on hares, rodents, foxes, and even roe deer.

 

Once this cat was quite common in all of Europe. By the middle of the 20th

century it had become extinct in most countries of Central and Western Europe.

In recent times there have been successful attempts to reintroduce the lynx to

forests.

 

Status of the Eurasian Lynx in various countries and regions:

 

France: Exterminated about 1900, but now reintroduced to the Vosges and

Pyrenees.

Germany: The lynx was exterminated in 1850. It was reintroduced to the Bavarian

Forest and the Harz in the 1990s. In 2002 the first birth of wild lynxes on

German territory was announced: a couple of lynxes in the Harz National Park had

given birth to the young.

Switzerland: Extinct in 1915, reintroduced in 1971. From here lynxes migrated to

Austria, where they had been exterminated as well.

Poland: There are about 1000 lynxes in the Bialowieza Forest and the Tatra

mountains.

Carpathian Mountains: 2200 lynxes in this mountain range, which extends from the

Czech Republic to Romania; largest contiguos lynx population west of the Russian

border.

Balkan peninsula: In Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Greece there are altogether

50 lynxes; the nearly extinct population may be increased by lynxes immigrating

from Slovenia.

Scandinavia: There are about 2500 lynxes in Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

Scandinavian lynxes were close to extinction, but increased again due to

protection. In the meantime hunting for lynxes has been legalised again.

Russia: More than 90 % of all Eurasian Lynxes live in the forests of Siberia.

They are distributed from the western borders of Russia to the Pacific island of

Sakhalin.

Central Asia: The lynx is also native to the Chinese provinces of Gansu,

Qinghai, Sichuan and Shaanxi, as well as to Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,

Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

[edit]

Subspecies

Lynx lynx lynx, Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe, western Siberiawestern

Siberiawestern Siberiawestern Siberiawestern Siberia

Lynx lynx dinniki, Caucasus

Lynx lynx isabellinus, Central Asia

Lynx lynx koslowi, central Siberia

Lynx lynx sardiniae, Sardinia, extinct

Lynx lynx stroganovi, Amur region

Lynx lynx wrangelli, eastern Siberia

Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Lynx "

 

 

 

and

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4315168.stm

 

 

 

 

 

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain

other

sets of people are human: Aldous Huxley