Although Chinese is called clouded leopard and English name is Clouded leopard, the clouded leopard is not the "leopard" we usually know.
The cat genus Leopard does not contain clouded leopards, but lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and snow leopards. The clouded leopard has its own separate genus: the genus Neoferelis. Prior to 2006, there was only one species of clouded leopard, and this year, scientists isolated Neofoelis diardi, the Sunda clouded leopard, which is only found in Sumatra and Kalimantan, to distinguish it from Neobulosa, a clouded leopard found in southeastern Asia (eastern India, the foothills of the Himalayas, the Indochina Peninsula, southern China to the Malay Peninsula).
Modern saber-toothed tiger
Many people like to call clouded leopards "modern saber-toothed tigers" because they have the longest proportion of upper canine teeth in cats. What is this concept? They are much smaller than leopards (leopard heads up to 196 cm long), but their canine teeth are comparable to leopards' canine teeth – clouded leopards have 7 cm long teeth and leopards 8.5 cm long.
Evidence suggests that when they are in trees, i.e., when they cannot hunt with their claws, they use their extra-long teeth to cling to their prey.
Clouded leopards get their name from the cloud-like pattern on their fur, and their fur is also their rare "original sin". People like its completely different pattern from other leopards, and because it is much smaller than other leopards, it seems that it is easier to hunt them. According to a report in the China Business Daily, in 2001, two farmers in Ankang City, Shaanxi Province, hunted and killed one leopard (later confirmed to be a clouded leopard) as a protected animal, stripped off the fur, separated the leopard bone, and waited for an opportunity to make a profit. This is the last record of the clouded leopard's northernmost appearance in Shaanxi Province.
How small is the clouded leopard? They weigh between 11.5 and 23 kg, not counting the tail, their males are 81 to 108 cm long, and the females are smaller, only 68 to 94 cm. Their tails are truly "spectacular" compared to their bodies, almost as long as their bodies, which is a great weapon for their extraordinary climbing and athletic ability.
Another great weapon is their body structure. Clouded leopards are small, lightweight, and streamlined, allowing them to travel freely through the forest. Plus, they have short legs, large soles, flexible ankles, and can rotate their entire feet backwards by 180°! This allows them to be suspended on one claw, upside down, and "perpendicular to the ground" from the trunk with their heads down and tail up.
Excellent athletic ability gives clouded leopards the right to "drift", their whereabouts are very hidden, and for many years, there have been few records of wild clouded leopards observed worldwide, and people cannot even know whether they live alone or in groups. It wasn't until infrared camera and radio collar technology became widespread that scientists set out to determine the clouded leopard's distribution area, distribution pattern, population, and threats.
Professor Lon Grassman of Texas A&M University is one of the pioneering researchers who captured wild clouded leopards and wore radio collars for them. He has long been in the field in Thailand to observe and study this adorable animal. In 2000, he captured live clouded leopards for the first time and determined their range of activity. According to Wikipedia, the Grassman team's study in Thailand is the first record of the exact range of the clouded leopard, and only 6 clouded leopards in the world have been worn with radio collars, and they are all in Thailand, which shows how mysterious they are.
So, where did people get their knowledge and research on clouded leopards? The answer is captive clouded leopards. The world's first success story was in 1992, when the first artificially inseminated clouded leopard was born in the United States. Clouded leopards are not easy to reproduce, and in the early captive period, there were also cases of clouded leopard mates killing each other. Although the artificial captivity of clouded leopards seems to have achieved some results, they are really sensitive, and the probability of success of artificial captivity and re-breeding of clouded leopards worldwide is not high.
The IUCN estimates that the number of clouded leopards worldwide is less than 10,000, and that number is getting smaller. Clouded leopards are arboreal animals, and habitat loss due to deforestation is one of the reasons for their decline, and another reason is illegal hunting.
Although they have long been included in Appendix I of the Washington Convention (if further international trade leads to the extinction of flora and fauna, which explicitly prohibits their international trade), and are also included in the "vulnerable" list of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, they are not valued much less because they are not known as cats such as tigers and leopards.
In 2014, Chris Shepherd, then regional director of southeast Asia at the International Wildlife Trade Research Organization (TRAFFIC), noted that "clouded leopards are typically species that have declined significantly due to illegal trade, but they are not among the priorities or priority protection of conservation organizations."
According to scientific observations, the clouded leopard subspecies native to Taiwan Island have long been extinct; the captive clouded leopard is still far from being released into the wild; and the life and habitat of the clouded leopard in the wild are still under threat. As ordinary people, to protect this "leopard" that is not a leopard, to protect this cute animal, we must deepen our understanding of them and popularize their relevant knowledge.
Together with Wikipedia, work hard to protect them!
Wen 丨 Search encyclopedia Juntu 丨 Pinterest, CKWRI, Google
Source: Wikipedia, Mongabay, China News Network, China Business Daily