Felines are indispensable in the animal kingdom, and there are many species, and each cat has a good fighting power, each cat has its own unique beauty, today to introduce you to the smaller one of the cats - prairie spotted cats.
Prairie spotted cat (scientific name: Felis silvestris shawiana): also known as wild cat, desert spotted cat, earth beaver and so on. It is a Chinese subspecies of wildcats, distributed only in China. The body shape is larger than the domestic cat, the body length is 50-70 cm, the tail length is 25-35 cm, almost exactly half the body length, the weight is about 16 pounds, it looks relatively stout.
The eyes are cunning, the temperament is irritable, and the fur is of different colors, and there are various spots on it. The tip of the tail is black with some black horizontal rings on the tail. There are 4 pairs of nipples.
The prairie spotted cat is a subspecies of the wild cat, so in China, the prairie spotted cat is the only species similar to the domestic cat. Their skulls are highly similar and difficult to distinguish. The difference is that domestic cats have longer snouts, and domestic cats have upper jaw snouts, while wild cats are missing.
The prairie spotted cat is a more grumpy feline, and it is agile, and the steppe wolf is a hegemon in the steppe, but in the face of the steppe wolf, it is still fearless, and with its agile reach, it can also leave several marks on the steppe wolf.
However, it does not dare to take the initiative to provoke steppe wolves, its general food is small rodents, birds, lizards and frogs, but also eats fish and insects. Weasels, gerbils and jerboas are its main food components. They are nocturnal creatures, but occasionally active during the day!
Like most cats, they have a strong sense of territory, and adult individuals generally occupy about 0.5 square kilometers of their territory, generally do not cross the line, but will leave the territory if there is not enough food or need to seek a mate.
Seeking a spouse means bloodshed, and in general, the process of seeking a spouse is always accompanied by a fight between males, and the strong have the right to mate.
The breeding ability of spotted cats is general, generally one litter a year, each litter produces 2-3 litters, and the pregnancy period of females is more than 60 days. Sexual maturity is reached at the age of 1 year. The life expectancy is more than 15 years.
Wild spotted cats are basically impossible to be domesticated, even if they are raised from a young age, but the wild nature of the body is also easily stimulated, in the wild, it plays an important role in inhibiting rat infestation, and is currently only distributed in Gansu, western Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Tibet and other regions in China.
In the 1992 survey, the population of China's northwest region may be about 10,000. As living space continues to compress, so does their number.
As early as 1988, it has been designated as China's Class II Key Protected Animal. Listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014 ver 3.1 – Low Risk (LC)