They're a wild cat native to, among other places, Korea, and called "Leopard cats" in English. I mentioned these cats briefly in a post two weeks ago. An Acorn in the Dog's Food has a good follow-up to that.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Cute wild cats in the middle of the road.
There's a photo gallery on the Chosun Ilbo website of a mother 살쾡이 (or 삵) and three kittens in the middle of the street in Yeongam county.
They're a wild cat native to, among other places, Korea, and called "Leopard cats" in English. I mentioned these cats briefly in a post two weeks ago. An Acorn in the Dog's Food has a good follow-up to that.
They're a wild cat native to, among other places, Korea, and called "Leopard cats" in English. I mentioned these cats briefly in a post two weeks ago. An Acorn in the Dog's Food has a good follow-up to that.
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Cool, I found a name for my new 8-day old kitten: Sal (살쾡이). He has the same colouring and markings as these guys in the photo (the markings he got from mom, but who knows where he got the colour; mom is white, dad is grey-blue)
ROK--Good for you
I couldn't care less or give two shits about the misportrayal of English teachers in the media, but this picture bothers me so much.
This picture is distressing. Those cats most likely got killed by a car. Is there even wildcat conservation in Korea? This country has no respect or concern for nature. Koreans lament the disappearence of the crane, but they reaped what they sowed.
"The measure of a society can be how well its people treat its animals." ~ Mohandas Gandhi
Which means Korea is at the bottom
I thought the way it was written that 살쾡이 was some breed of cat.
It's not "Leopard cat" in English. It's bobcat.
Except that bobcats are only indigenous to North America - from far southern Canada to northern Mexico - which presents a problem in explaining the populations found across Korea.
I did some searching on the internet and I'm still not entirely sure about the English translation of their name.
1. If you enter "bobcat" in Naver's translation site it says "살쾡이".
2. If you click on the link for "살쾡이" on that page it takes you to a page that says the English translation is "a wildcat; a lynx".
3. If you enter "lynx" into the Naver translation box it brings up a page that says the Korean word is "스라소니".
4. Naver does not return any search results for the term "leopard cat".
To make things a little clearer, the scientific name for the bobcat is Lynx rufus. The lynx is Lynx lynx. The leopard cat is Prionailurus bengalensis.
5. If you go to Wikipedia (in English), search for "leopard cat", and then click the link for the Korean page, the name that comes up is "살쾡이".
6. Performing a similar search under the term "lynx" brings up a Korean page for "스라소니속".
Both of the Korean pages use images that look very little like the results that come up for 삵 or 살쾡이, which doesn't exactly help much. For the leopard cat, the image is for the Southeast Asian subspecies, while for the lynx it appears to be a Norwegian specimen of the Eurasian Lynx subspecies.
7. I did find an image under 스라소니속 posted by a Mr. Kim Jinsuk (jskim@bioinfo.kordic.re.kr) that he says is from a 1998 issue of Hankyoreh 21. The snout on that specimen looks more pronounced to me than those on the 삵 photos I've found on Google. However, that might be more from the angle of the photo or possibly personal bias.
8. The Leopard Cat subspecies found in Korea is Prionailurus bengalensis euptilurus, also called the Amur Leopard Cat (after the Amur River in Siberia) or Дальневосточный лесной кот on the Russian Wikipedia page.
9. A quick Google search under "Дальневосточный лесной кот" brings up two Russian zoos that identify it with the scientific name Felis (Prionailurus) bengalensis euptilura. Images from the same Google search look more like 삵 photos than Eurasian Lynx photos.
So maybe it's not a lynx (and even less likely a bobcat), but that doesn't mean that the 삵 is a leopard cat.
10. A search for "Amur leopard cat" did bring up this page with an image that may be a 삵. Unfortunately, even though it looks like he spends a lot of time following mammals across the globe, I have no idea what his credentials are, nor those of Rich Lindie, who he cites.
11. I also came across this photo gallery for the Amur Leopard Cat, but it borrows images from across the internet so it's authenticity is definitely questionable.
12. Looking up "삵" online brings up a government website as the fourth result. That page has a stuffed specimen and lists the scientific name as Felis bengalensis manchurica(ei) and the (English) common name as "Leopard Cat (or Small-eared, Bengal Cat)".
13. I probably should have mentioned this above, but typing in “wildcat” into Naver brings up the results “살쾡이, 들고양이”
14. However, the range of the Wildcat, Felis silvestris, only extends as far eastward as the Tibetan Plateau, home of Felis bieti / Felis silvestris bieti. (It’s common name is the Chinese Mountain Cat) Apart from the bands on its tail it does seem to resemble several pictures of the 삵 that I've seen. However, its limited range and description as the “least studied” of the Wildcats leaves me wondering if the 삵 is actually a Wildcat.
So .... euhh ... my (own, personal) conclusion is that it's not a bobcat, most likely neither a lynx or Wildcat, and possibly (tentatively) a Paleoarctic-adapted subspecies of leopard cat.
And with this two-part comment I have almost certainly beat Kushibo in the tl;dr department. Hypocrite that I am.
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