This is how professional cat lovers suck cats...

According to a British study, 82% of girls find boys who like animals attractive, and most girls think that boys with cute cats are more attractive!

According to my country's 2022 statistics, the number of one-person households in China has exceeded 125 million. The increase in the number of people living alone has made the companionship role of pets more prominent.

Image source @CCTV Finance Channel

Among them, the number of people who keep cats and dogs reached 68.44 million, accounting for more than 50%. Also because of the convenience of raising conditions, the number of people who keep cats exceeds the number of people who keep dogs.

Therefore, we often see such crazy "cat-hugging" scenes.

When we "sniff" our domestic cats and enjoy their satisfied purring, few people remember that there are about 40 species of wild "cats" wandering around, and we cannot "sniff" these "cats", such as...

Also, like this.

The "cats" mentioned here are wild cats, of which there are 13 species distributed in China: tiger, snow leopard, leopard, clouded leopard, golden cat, clouded cat, lynx, leopard cat, fishing cat, manul, wild cat, desert cat, jungle cat. Most of these "cats" are facing an uncertain future.

Image credit: National Geographic

China is one of the countries with the most cat species in the world, accounting for about 1/3 of the world's cat species. We still have a lot of big "cats" to "cloud-suck"!

Here we have to mention the internet celebrity manul "Manul 4 Seconds"~

In fact, it is not only one of the most primitive cat species in the world, but also the walking emoticon package of the cat planet!

Image source: Made by netizens

Although cute, it is also really fierce! It is a brave warrior who drives away the golden eagle, the overlord of the sky, and it is also a little enemy that often fights with the Tibetan fox!

Image source: Book of China's Big Cats, provided by Liang Haihong

The first time that people all over the country were really attracted to it was in Xining. The popular science expert Zhang Chenliang visited the Xining Wildlife Park, the only place in the country where manuls can be seen. He complained that the mating time of manuls only lasted 4 seconds, which led to him being dubbed "Manul Simiao" by the netizens.

Video source: Daily Design Monthly Planning

Let’s “cat-hugging” on a large scale!

Leaving the zoo, we can see more "cat movies" in the wild.

For example, if we want to distinguish the sexes of desert cats in the wild, we need to do a "butt analysis" ~ It turns out that the distance between the anus and genitals of a female cat is much closer than that of a male cat.

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, female on the left and male on the right, provided by Shanshui Nature Conservation Center

What could be more eye-catching than a "cat bell"? A North China leopard marks its territory by scratching the bark of a tree, but the male leopard's orange-yellow "cat bell" is too bright to be seen.

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, provided by Cat Alliance

We also know that Snow Leopard has always been a lone ranger, but when the Internet celebrity Snow Leopard "Bingbing" met the girl of his dreams, then... this should not be content for children under 18 years old~

Image source: China Big Cats book, courtesy of Wild Xinjiang

It is not enough to "suck" by yourself, you also need to learn advanced "cat sucking" techniques from professionals

Why do some cats look captivating while others look adorable?

Image source: Made by netizens (the humorous manul and the naturally elegant snow leopard)

It turns out that cats have different pupils. Generally, larger cats have round pupils, while smaller ones have vertical pupils, and there are semicircular pupils in between. Different pupil structures can help cats gain better vision in different environments, and also shape different "cat personalities"~

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, comparison of cat species' weight and pupil shape

How can we tell if we are seeing the same leopard cat? Researchers of "big cats" tell us that we can distinguish them by the patterns on the different bodies of the "cats".

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, identification of four leopard cat cubs, provided by Mosquito

Although there is no room for two tigers in one mountain, even in the same area, there is spatial overlap between different "cats". This saying is not an iron rule in the "cat" world.

Image source: China Big Cats book, upper leopard, lower snow leopard, provided by Shanshui Nature Conservation Center

Knowing the “cat”, knowing the “cat’s” reason

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, provided by Ningxia Liupanshan National Nature Reserve, Fudan University, and Cat Alliance

The North China leopards in Taihang Mountain, Hebei Province, are just of normal size, but those in Liupan Mountain, Ningxia Province, are fat and strong! Why? Because Liupan Mountain has more ungulates than Taihang Mountain, and most of them are wild boars and roe deer. How can a leopard that can eat "local pig" meat not be fat?

We can also see the world's only video record of clouded leopards' courtship behavior.

Video source: National Geographic

Clouded leopards were discovered relatively late in China, which may be related to the fact that they are distributed in the same area as clouded leopards and have similar morphologies.

The first record of clouded leopard in China was a few fur specimens from Lijiang, Yunnan in the 1970s. Before the 21st century, the last confirmed record of clouded leopard in Yunnan was two specimens from Ailao Mountain in December 1984. In 2006, Dr. Li Sheng of Peking University photographed a fur from Dulong River in Gongshan County, Yunnan. At first, the similar cloud-like pattern made him think it was a clouded leopard fur, but after careful identification, he found it was a clouded leopard.

Clouded leopards and clouded cats sound similar, and their patterns are also very similar, but from the words "cat" and "leopard" we can initially understand that the two creatures are very different in size. Clouded leopards weigh 16 to 25 kilograms, while clouded leopards only weigh 2 to 5 kilograms. The blood relationship between the two is also quite different. Clouded leopards belong to the genus Leopardus in the leopard lineage, while clouded cats belong to the genus Lycaon in the golden cat lineage, which also means that clouded cats and golden cats are more closely related in genetics. One is a kitten, and the other is a big cat.

Image source: made by netizens (clouded cat on the left, clouded leopard on the right)

At the end of 2014, during a joint species survey conducted by Kadoorie Conservation China in Hong Kong and the Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve in Yunnan, clouded leopard cats were photographed twice at night. In fact, there is another big cat called leopard cat. Clouded leopard x clouded leopard = leopard cat?

NO!

We can attract so many interesting "cats" thanks to the complex topography of our motherland

my country's vast territory and complex terrain have created ecological diversity, which is why there is one or several wild cats in every terrestrial ecosystem in my country.

The majestic Qinghai-Tibet Plateau provides a habitat of 2 million square kilometers for snow leopards. The Yunnan-Tibet region with undulating green forests hides the last batch of clouded leopards in China. The Northeast woodlands with mixed deciduous broad-leaved forests and coniferous trees retain the huge Siberian tigers. The arid and desolate Inner Mongolian sands occasionally reveal the elusive desert cats...

Some of these "cats" exist as small hunters, while others occupy top ecological niches in the ecosystem, such as tigers, leopards and snow leopards.

From south to north, from west to east, wild cats in different regions have huge differences in their living habits. Some "big cats" have even developed different groups due to different regions. For example, China has two lynx groups: the forest lynx in Northeast my country, Inner Mongolia and northern Xinjiang, and the plateau lynx on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Image source: The book "Big Cats of China", Lynx in the Forest/Lynx on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, provided by Qiaonu Foundation, Cat Alliance, and Shanshui Nature Conservation Center

We also know that cats, as creatures in the upper middle of the food chain, need sufficient food and habitat to survive, which is full of contradictions with the continuous expansion of human land. Their number and distribution have also shrunk in the same historical period, which is why they are still difficult to appear in people's vision despite their adaptation to diverse geological environments.

In order to see these "hidden" big cats, we have to thank the scientific expedition personnel and volunteers who work hard on the front line. Wherever the "big cats" appear, there are traces of their tracking.

What field expedition personnel can do is beyond our imagination

In order to obtain more first-hand information, "cat protectors" have placed many infrared cameras in disguise on the roads that the "cats" pass through in the wild. In the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon area in Medog County, Tibet alone, researcher Lv Zhi and her team have set up more than 100 infrared cameras in this area. As a result, we can see all kinds of interesting pictures.

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, infrared equipment deployment

There are also hardworking "poop collectors".

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, the "poop collector" who found snow leopard feces had an "excited" smile on his face

Of course, these feces still need to be carefully tested by indoor experimenters.

Image source: "Big Cats of China" book, provided by Shanshui Nature Conservation Center

In fact, field expeditions are not as easy as they seem in the pictures. In addition to extreme climates, there are often no communication signals, getting lost, confrontations with wild animals, and even geological disasters. In order to bring these uncommon wild "big cats" to our eyes, the expedition personnel have devoted all their efforts.

Except for scientific researchers, we ordinary people know nothing about the basic conditions, distribution areas and population trends of the 13 existing cat species in China.

But among the hot topics that have become popular every year, we can see the mighty Siberian tiger, the blue-eyed, long-tailed plateau snow leopard, the Xining animal internet celebrity manul "苲思邈", the mysterious and changeable golden cat, and the Eurasian lynx with two small pokes of hair on its head.

Image source: Sina Weibo

Whether it is due to human-animal conflict or cultivation and recovery, these wild cats that are not seen in daily life are gradually entering people's vision as the topic of "life interest", which in itself is a good signal.

We look forward to more good news for living beings.

Let’s suck the cat together!

END

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