Unceremoniously named for its distinctively formed cranium, the flat-headed cat is up for attention as one of the crucial global’s maximum endangered and elusive pussycats. Weighing in at not up to the scale of a home cat, this diminutive species roams semiaquatic and wetland habitat in Sumatra, Borneo, the Malay Peninsula and southern Thailand.
To navigate their muddy rainy habitat, those cats are provided with claws that don’t absolutely retract; in part webbed paws; large, close-set eyes suited for a nocturnal way of life; and brief, stubby tails. On their menu is a wide selection of fish, amphibians, rodents and crustaceans.
Like many felids, flat-headed cats (Prionailurus planiceps) are vulnerable to extinction and are categorised as endangered at the IUCN Crimson Record, as swaths in their habitat are misplaced to agricultural vegetation together with oil palm. A 2015 be taught assessed the flat-headed cat as a pussycat of best possible conservation precedence, along the tiger (Panthera tigris), cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), leopard (Panthera pardus) and puma (Puma concolor). An previous be taught indicated that best round 10-20% of the species’ appropriate habitat falls inside of secure spaces, whilst up to 70% of its habitat has perhaps turn into improper.
Compounding those threats is the truth that, like with such a lot of different wild felids, the flat-headed cat is devilishly tough to check, leading to massive wisdom gaps about its elementary ecology, inhabitants numbers and actual distribution. As just lately as 2019, best round 40 digicam entice information existed, and it’s now not even transparent if the species nonetheless persists in southern Thailand, the northernmost extent of its fluctuate.
“It’s arguably one of the crucial global’s rarest felids,” says Wai-Ming Wong, director of small cat conservation science on the wildcat NGO Panthera. “Numerous its habitat is sadly getting destroyed and truly now not a lot is understood about it.”
Digicam-shy consultants
The extraordinary problem of finding out P. planiceps is, a minimum of partly, because of its specific evolutionary characteristics. Along Asia’s fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), the flat-headed cat is uniquely tailored to thrive in humid, semiaquatic tropical environments comparable to mangrove forests, lowland forests liable to flooding, peat swamps, and alongside impenetrably vegetated waterways — habitats all easiest for concealing this small felid, however now not so conducive for researchers and their digicam traps.
“Whilst you paintings in a mangrove [swamp], I will inform you, it’s no comic story,” says Carl Traeholt with Copenhagen Zoo, who has studied the flat-headed cat. There, scientists undergo intense warmth and humidity, along side biting bugs, whilst navigating a tangled maze of arching stilt-like mangrove roots rising amid brackish water and treacherous dust. “It’s truly tough terrain to paintings in and only a few other people in reality do this,” he says.
As a result, this wetland-specialized species is among the least-known small cats globally, with a paucity of information throughout its fluctuate. Digicam-trap research meant for extra charismatic species might by the way select up a flat-headed cat or two in passing, however ceaselessly the animals aren’t detected once more at that spot. A be taught printed in 2017 notes that digicam traps throughout Borneo, Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia that seen for greater than 100,000 nights yielded best 46 flat-headed cat detections — proving the average researcher chorus that the species is notoriously digicam shy.
But some professionals say the cat will not be as uncommon as presumed. Slightly, the loss of detections is also because of the mixed problem of running in its habitat and a loss of research adapted to focus on the species in its favourite environs. “Once we use digicam traps for months, we ceaselessly don’t select up the species, however all over a cruise on a ship you’ll spot it,” says Mohd Azlan Jayasilan, with the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation on the College of Malaysia Sarawak, at the island of Borneo.
Such an incident has took place two times to Mohd Azlan and his staff: as soon as once they noticed a flat-headed cat resting on mangroves beside the Sarawak River, and as soon as in Maludam Nationwide Park in Sarawak. “On account of the rarity when it comes to knowledge, I am getting excited each time I am getting a document of them in my digicam traps,” he provides.
However this hard-to-study flat-headed cat habitat is rapid disappearing, with a few of Asia’s maximum endangered wooded area spaces, together with lowland tropical wooded area and peat swamp wooded area.
Whilst habitat loss because of speedy agricultural encroachment is a number one danger, professionals word different dangers, comparable to searching, seize as bycatch, air pollution of waterways, highway kills, and perhaps the unfold of illness from home animals. Some professionals rank the endangered flat-headed cat’s excessive chance degree along the elusive, and in addition endangered, Borneo bay cat (Catopuma badia).
Taking pictures a cat
In 2021, an extraordinary feat took place: researchers in Malaysia stuck and radio-collared a feminine flat-headed cat. For almost two months it despatched again information on the place it spent its days and nights.
“It was once an excessively thrilling, cool enjoy,” recollects Amanda Wilson, a Ph.D. scholar and analysis officer with the Danau Girang Box Centre, who was once a part of the staff that tagged and tracked that cat. Knowledge from this unmarried person confirmed that this small cat has a fittingly small-sized fluctuate.
In comparison to the bigger leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), as an example, the flat-headed cat’s fluctuate seems to be way more limited, says Wilson, who’s finding out each species for her Ph.D. Leopard cats can wander as much as 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) inside of their house fluctuate and readily employ oil palm plantations to seek rodents and different prey. “However with the flat-headed cat, their fluctuate is far smaller; they just pass as much as 2 kilometers [1.2 mi],” Wilson says.
The radio-collared cat’s “core house,” the place it spent maximum of its day, was once much more constricted, protecting simply 500 sq. meters (about 5,400 sq. toes), Wilson provides. In response to this information, an image — despite the fact that a fuzzy, restricted one — started to shape. The tagged feminine didn’t keep solely in its wild riparian habitat, however gave the impression to have some adaptation to searching in disturbed spaces in wooded area that bordered an oil palm plantation, Wilson says.
However restricted conclusions may also be drawn from this one collared cat, and for Wilson that singular enjoy underscores the desire for larger efforts to grasp the species to offer protection to it: “Each and every bit of information that we gather is, for me, precious.”
Panthera’s Wong notes that the ideas retrieved from the collared cat may have vital conservation implications. He means that, if a extremely endangered species just like the flat-headed cat unearths sturdy conservation price inside of wooded area adjoining to grease palm plantations, then that would toughen the case to maintain such spaces, he says. However additional information shall be had to construct this kind of case.
On that entrance, Traeholt and his staff are gearing as much as seize and observe flat-headed cats later this 12 months. They have got radio collars in hand and are figuring out appropriate websites; all they want now are the cats.
“I believe now we have a real likelihood of having the ability to seize a few of them,” he says.
Past digicam trapping
Digicam traps were the go-to means for finding out P. planiceps. However this comes with a lot of pitfalls. A big, centered survey for flat-headed cats in Malaysia’s Deramakot panorama got here up with only one document — an excessively being worried incidence, in keeping with Wong, because the area is thought of as a possible stronghold for the species.
Then again, shrinking the distances between cameras greater the numbers of sightings, including weight to the concept that it calls for a specific method to even catch a glimpse of this cat.
“We truly wish to know the way they transfer during the wooded area and the way they use their habitats for us to get important inhabitants knowledge,” Wong says. “Because it stands, it’s very tough for us to do any significant research as a result of we simply have so few detections.”
Given those demanding situations, further equipment comparable to environmental DNA may just end up helpful. Professionals say eDNA can be a “game-changer” for tracking mammal species writ massive, with that considering already supported by means of research of alternative felids comparable to Pallas’s cat (Otocolobus manul), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), snow leopard (Panthera uncia) and jaguar (Panthera onca).
“Through hanging digicam traps available in the market, we’re simply more or less hoping {that a} flat-headed cat will pass [our] trail,” says Wong. “While if we will be able to use genetic strategies, we will be able to be actively available in the market, taking swabs. That may well be a technique that shall we doubtlessly overlay with digicam traps to lend a hand us building up detections.”
However eDNA isn’t with out its personal demanding situations, as sampling may best give a sign {that a} cat is within the neighborhood, and now not any knowledge on densities, says Traeholt. “It may be very an identical with digicam trapping, in some way, as absence of document does now not imply that they’re now not there.” Nonetheless, he says this new software has numerous possible.
It would supply “any other option to lend a hand us … locate an excessively uncommon species that’s not easy to locate in tough environments,” Wong says.
Saving the thriller cat
Researching the flat-headed cat indisputably items large demanding situations, however so too does creating efficient conservation motion plans for this kind of cryptic species.
“We wish to cope with threats, we by no means wish to … put out of your mind about the ones,” Wong says, however first, researchers should achieve a deeper working out of the place precisely the cats are living. Panthera plans to behavior a range-wide survey of the flat-headed cat, together with a pilot survey in southern Thailand to resolve its presence there.
Different organizations, such because the Save Wild Cats Basis, are investment conservation and making an attempt to release captive-breeding methods in partnership with zoos in fluctuate nations. So far, such efforts have confirmed futile. Songkla Zoo in Thailand is one such heart; it plans to trial synthetic insemination of captive flat-headed cats later this 12 months.
“The flat-headed cat is ready to turn into extinct if we don’t lend a hand maintain it,” says Surasak Yimprasert, head of the conservation, analysis and animal well being division at Songkhla Zoo. He says world collaboration is urgently had to toughen breeding efforts and different motion, comparable to consciousness elevating on the group degree.
“If you need conservation within the wild to be efficient, we should teach people who find themselves just about the wooded area and save you encroachment on … the habitat of the flat-headed cat,” says Yimprasert.
A barrier, then again, is proscribed pastime within the species, say professionals. Small cats basically face a loss of conservation consciousness, one thing that some researchers say is converting, as investment and data of small felids will increase bit by bit. As details about those cats grows, so too does working out in their pivotal function in ecosystems and the bigger internet of lifestyles.
However in comparison to their large cat cousins, the small wild cats of the arena nonetheless face massive hurdles to their survival, in opposition to a backdrop of meager investment and restricted analysis; the flat-headed cat isn’t any exception.
Jim Sanderson, founder and director of the Small Wild Cat Conservation Basis, emphasizes the wish to scale back threats by means of making preservation of the flat-headed cat’s habitat a most sensible precedence. Traeholt suggests making use of a precautionary means, appearing now to offer protection to spaces the place a couple of information of the endangered cat exist.
Many questions stay in regards to the flat-headed cat, however for professionals a minimum of something is sure: this felid is in pressing want of conservation ahead of it slips quietly into oblivion. “We don’t wish to wait till it’s attaining the top of the inhabitants ahead of we commence emphasizing the desire for researching and protective the flat-headed cat,” says Wilson.
Citations:
Wilting, A., Twine, A., Hearn, A. J., Hesse, D., Mohamed, A., Traeholdt, C., … Hofer, H. (2010). Modelling the species distribution of flat-headed cats (Prionailurus planiceps), an endangered South-East Asian small felid. PLOS ONE, 5(3), e9612. doi:10.1371/magazine.pone.0009612
Dickman, A. J., Hinks, A. E., Macdonald, E. A., Burnham, D., & Macdonald, D. W. (2015). Priorities for international felid conservation. Conservation Biology, 29(3), 854-864. doi:10.1111/cobi.12494
Bohmann, Okay., Evans, A., Gilbert, M. T., Carvalho, G. R., Creer, S., Knapp, M., … De Bruyn, M. (2014). Environmental DNA for natural world biology and biodiversity tracking. Developments in Ecology & Evolution, 29(6), 358-367. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2014.04.003
Wadey, J., Ramli, M., Moore, J., Fletcher, C., & Campos-Arceiz, A. (2016) Flat-headed cats, Prionailurus planiceps — A literature evaluate in their detection-rate in camera-trap research and failure to re-detect them in Pasoh Woodland Reserve, Malaysia. Magazine of Indonesian Herbal Historical past, 4(2), 16-28. Retrieved from http://jinh.fmipa.unand.ac.identity/index.php/jinh/article/view/118
Danaisawadi, P., Piriyarom, S., Krasaeden, W., Pramkasem, S., Rurkkhum, S., & Yimprasert, S. (2023). Time funds and process patterns all over the mating length of flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps in captivity. Tropical Herbal Historical past, 7, 221-228. Retrieved from https://li01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/tnh/article/view/258833
This article by means of Sean Mowbray was once first printed by means of Mongabay.com on 29 Would possibly 2024. Lead Symbol: A flat-headed cat snapped at evening at the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. This small felid is thought of as probably the most endangered cats in Southeast Asia, however is never stuck on digicam and massive wisdom gaps exist about its elementary ecology, inhabitants numbers, and distribution. Symbol courtesy of Sebastian Kennerknecht/Panthera.
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