Taiwan Island is the largest island in China, the island has beautiful scenery, animal and plant resources and mineral resources, so Taiwan is often called the treasure island Taiwan. However, there are very few wild cats distributed in Taiwan, only two species. One of the most familiar is the Taiwanese clouded leopard, but this beautiful cat has been considered extinct. Although someone claimed to have seen a Taiwanese clouded leopard in the wild in early 2019, this news has not been confirmed by authoritative institutions. The picture below shows the world's only Taiwanese clouded leopard specimen in a museum in Taiwan.
Today, there is only one proven wild cat on the island of Taiwan – the ocelot.
The ocelot, also known as the stone tiger and the copper money cat, is a small cat of the same size as the domestic cat, which is widely distributed in Asia, with more than ten subspecies. The ocelot distributed in Taiwan is also called Taiwan Stone Tiger, which belongs to the East Asian species of ocelot. Similar to other subspecies of ocelots, the Taiwanese stone tiger has leopard spots, with two distinct white markings between the forehead and the eyes. Shi Hu has a habit that is very different from that of domestic cats, that is, domestic cats like to cover their excrement with sand, while Shi Hu does not.
100 years ago, the Taiwan stone tiger was distributed in many places on the island, but due to the influence of human activities, the distribution area of the Taiwan stone tiger gradually decreased and the number became smaller and smaller, it is estimated that there are less than 500 at present, which is not as large as the number of wild Siberian tigers. If they are not protected, I am afraid that they will disappear in Taiwan soon (Note: the disappearance in this case belongs to the regional extinction of the ocelot, not the extinction of species or the extinction of subspecies). By then, there will not be a single wild cat living in the wild on the vast treasure island of Taiwan. This will be a sad ending.
There are many reasons for the decline in the number of Taiwan's stone tigers, such as: humans hunt and kill the Taiwan stone tiger as a kind of wild meat; pesticides and poisonous bait cause the stone tiger to poison or reduce the number of its prey; because the Taiwan stone tiger will catch poultry and livestock, people will set traps to catch it... In addition, while the development of roads has led to the fragmentation of the habitat of Taiwan's Shihu, the coming and going of vehicles has also posed a great threat to the safety of Taiwan's Shihu. Experts agree that the biggest threat facing Taiwan's Shihu at present is "road killing."
The picture above shows a statistical map of the number of deaths of Shi Hu in Taiwan from vehicle impacts. Although many roads have ecological corridors for wildlife, since 2011, 72 Taiwanese stone tigers have been killed by vehicles. It should be noted that these 72 are only the data that have been counted, and in fact, there will be more stone tigers killed by vehicles. For Taiwan's Shihu, who is already rare in number, every small life lost is a big loss to this world.
The picture above shows a specimen of a Taiwanese stone tiger stored in the museum. I hope that under the protection of humans, Taiwan's stone tiger can survive well, and do not let our descendants only learn about this cute cat through specimens.