Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500. [HP deskjet F4280 printer/scanner - $99] Looking for inspiration? Or do you just enjoy medical-feline crossover puns? Either way, you can amuse yourself and your cat companion by arranging your pet on a regular desktop scanner. For more, see the Cat Scan tumblr. Some of [...]

That post about stray cat management sure set off a firestorm, both here and at Salon, where it was syndicated. It ended up being a story people either loved or hated, which didn’t entirely surprise me. As I said in the post, “The people in favor of euthanizing cats think that ecosystem health is more [...]

Every few months, the fact that domestic cats are ruthless killers hits the news. This past summer it was the Kitty Cam, memorably explained by webcomic The Oatmeal, which saw nearly one-third of cats kill 2 animals each week on average. In 2011 a study found that domestic cats were responsible for nearly half of [...]

Thirteen years, 1,500 infrared cameras, hundreds of catnip-baited hair traps and an almost incalculable number of hours in the field have confirmed what scientists have long feared: the Formosan clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa brachyura) is in all likelihood extinct. The subspecies, endemic to Taiwan, was wiped out by poaching, trade in its pelts during the [...]

Poaching, habitat loss, inbreeding and hybridization. These are just a few of the threats faced by many wild feline species around the globe. Here are six of the world’s most endangered feline species and subspecies—some of which may not survive into the next century. 1. Amur leopards Let’s start with the good news: The population [...]

Australia has a feral cat problem. Cats and other invasive predators have driven dozens of the country’s native bird, reptile and small mammal species into extinction, and continue to threaten several others. So many feral felines roam the country that the government often traps, shoots or poisons the animals in order to control populations. Most [...]

Scotland is home to a least a hundred thousand feral cats. Unfortunately, the cats that now live in the Scottish Highlands are not native to the country, and they have helped push the already squeezed native felines closer toward extinction. The native group—the Scottish wildcat (Felis silvestris grampia), also known as the Highland tiger—isn’t much [...]

Conservation groups are reporting better than expected news on two rare leopard species, the critically endangered Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) in Russia and the endangered snow leopard (P. uncia) in Afghanistan. First up, the Amur leopard, of which there are fewer than 50 animals left in the wild. But those weak numbers might be [...]

The 1988 arrival of viral hemorrhagic disease (VHD) in Spain devastated that country’s European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) population and, in the process, possibly doomed the local species most adapted to hunt rabbit, the Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus). The wildcat is now critically endangered, with an estimated 100 to 200 animals remaining in the wild. That [...]

One of the risks in writing about endangered species is concentrating too much on the cute ones. But I couldn’t skip covering the African black-footed cat (Felis nigripes) and the scientific breakthrough that could give this rare species an extra chance at survival. The African black-footed cat is one of the world’s smallest and rarest [...]

When the Bornean clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) was first identified as its own species in 2006, it was almost instantly added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as “vulnerable” to extinction. Just four years later evidence out of Brunei, one of the three countries [...]

For decades, scientists have been trying to solve a tough question: if the Internet runs out of cat pictures, can we generate more using advanced mathematics?* A paper posted on the arxiv earlier this month by mathematicians Kathryn Lindsey and the late William Thurston calms fears about “peak cat.” In the paper, they describe a [...]

Or maybe I should have titled this post as “Colorado Cat Becomes Big Star in New York, Goes Home to Rural Life Anyway.” After all, she made it to NBC’s Today show this morning (video), and several media outlets picked up the Associated Press story about how she went missing at a time when most [...]

Seriously. Look at this guy. It doesn’t get any better than that. Berlin Zoo has announced the birth of its first rusty-spotted cat kittens since it opened 168 years ago. Nicknamed ‘the hummingbirds of the cat family’, rusty spotted cats (Prionailurus rubiginosus) rival the black-footed cats (Felis nigripes) of southern Africa for the title of [...]

This lovely little kitten with a head that looks just slightly too big for its face is a Scottish wildcat, a very rare type of wildcat that has dwindled to about 400 individuals living in Britain, mostly restricted to the Highlands of Scotland. It’s also one of the two kittens, named Merinda and Brave, born [...]

For over 100 years, a potentially significant dead cat has been sat in storage in a British museum. Specifically, the specimen – the lynx Ab4458 – has been at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery ever since it was added to the collections there in February 1903, and what makes it significant is that it was [...]

Over the weekend I (with others) visited the Hampshire County Museum Service store at Chilcomb House, Winchester. Lots of fossils, preserved insects, and also taxiderm birds and mammals. I especially enjoy going there because it’s the repository of the famous Hayling Island Jungle cat (or Hayling Island Swamp cat). Here’s a photo of me and [...]

Matt Wedel kindly passed on the photos you see here. They show the Man-eater of Mfuwe, an enormous male lion Panthera leo that terrorised the small town of Mfuwe (and the surrounds) in the Luangwa River Valley of eastern Zambia. The photos were taken in Chicago’s Field Museum where the specimen has been on display [...]

Virtually all people interested in animals are aware of the so-called ‘mystery big cat’ phenomenon. Large, often black, cats are reported with apparent frequency from the eastern USA and the UK. But the phenomenon isn’t unique to those two areas. Here, we’re going to look specifically at the ‘mystery big cat’ phenomenon in Australia. The [...]

Apparently when something interests you, the best way to figure it out is to smack it really hard, and repeatedly. If you’re a cat, at least. h/t @ferrisjabr

Why were cats domesticated in the first place? And how? Given their relatively poor ability to socially engage with humans, it isn’t exactly clear why or how they were domesticated, or how they came to play such a significant role in human culture.