Credit: Highland Wildlife Park
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 recently at the Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland as part of their Highland Tiger conservation project.
According to a 2007 paper in Science, all domestic cats descended from a Middle Eastern wildcat called Felis sylvestris (literally, “cat of the woods”). Author Carlos Driscoll, a research scientist at the University of Oxford, suggested that these cats, in typical cat-fashion, “sort of domesticated themselves”, wandering into our homes and claiming our beds and tabletops as their own from as early as 12,000 years ago. WhileFelis sylvestris is not considered endangered, because its subspecies are spread all over the world, the Scottish wildcat is so endangered, it’s not only considered one of the rarest mammals in Britain, but is the only surviving member of the cat family native to Britain.
The wildcats of Asia, Europe and Africa are most often considered subspecies of Felis silvestris, which would make the Scottish wildcat a population of the European wildcat subspecies, Felis silvestris silvestris. But some taxonomists consider it a subspecies of its own, called Felis silvestris silvestris, because it’s spent two million years in total isolation.
Courtesy: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/2012/06/27/a-cat-that-can-never-be-tamed/
*********** Enjoy..Anil
