Not As Extinct As Previously Thought: Tsushima Leopard Cat

In its year end wrap up, Cryptomundo has an excellent article on a cryptid that I hadn't heard of before, the Tsushima leopard cat.  This feline is native to one tiny island, Tsushima, which is part of Japan.  The island is ridiculously small, only 273 square miles, about the same size as a big city like Los Angeles or Atlanta, and is situated in the Korean strait about halfway between Korea and Japan.

The island of Tsushima is divided into two smaller islands by an artificial waterway, thus separating the population of Tsushima leopard cats into two sub-groups.  The Tsushima leopard cat is hanging in on the upper island, which is far less populated than the lower island, and is home to between 80 and 110 of the cats.  

The Tsushima leopard cat had not been spotted on the lower island since 1984, when a dead one was found beside a roadway.  However, a trail camera managed to catch a Tsushima leopard cat on film on the lower island in 2007, confirming that there was at least one of the cats making a living there, however scanty.

A live Tsushima leopard cat was discovered on the lower island, a young male who was "suffering from severe malnourishment."  The Tsushima leopard cat is considered "critically endangered," which is particularly poignant because it was only scientifically described in the 1960s.  The Tsushima leopard cat bears a close resemblance to the domestic house cat, and is often mistaken for it.

The story of an animal previously thought to be extinct being rediscovered would be incomplete without a mention of the coelacanth, which was thought to have been wiped out hundreds of years before fisherman hauled one out of the depth and brought it to shore.  In the time since then, we have learned that the coelacanth is actually fairly common, you just have to look in the right places.  

The same cannot be said for the Tsushima leopard cat which is in grave peril.  However, it does give hope and lend credence to the occasional stories of a supposedly extinct animal being spotted in the wild.  I'm thinking in particular of two cryptids native to the southern hemisphere: the moa (a large bird, the emu's giant sized cousin, which were the dominant herbivores of New Zealand until the Maori wiped them out in the 1500s) and the thyacine or Tasmanian tiger, the last known example of which died in a Washington D.C. zoo in 1902.

The Tsushima leopard cat is a sub-species of the Leopard Cat, which is a tropical feline native to all of south Asia.  Although the leopard cat has spots like a leopard, it is only a distant relative.  The leopard cat is nocturnal, and primarily lives in tropical forests.  

The Asian leopard cat, when mated with a domestic housecat, produces a hybrid animal known as the Bengal cat.  These have been steadily gaining in popularity as a boutique pet breed.  Although the leopard cat is well known as being one of the least "tame-able" wild cats, Bengal cats which are at least three generations removed from their wild leopard cat foundation animal are quite tame, and beautiful as well.