The animal closest to the saber-toothed tiger
What is this animal skull?
It is estimated that friends who have seen the Ice Age will blurt out - saber-toothed tiger! Its two slender, sharp, sword-like teeth reveal its identity. You may also have friends who point out to you that the saber-toothed tiger is extinct today, and even the saber-toothed animals in the same category as it are extinct.
Indeed, the saber-toothed tigers that dominated the planet in animal history are today all fossilized. However, the animal skull we see is not a saber-toothed tiger, but a legacy for an animal that still lives on Earth.
▲ This photograph taken in Taiwan by the Japanese anthropologist Dr. Torii around 1900 shows a young man from the Lukai tribe of the Takayama tribe
The leather coat he was wearing was from the animal closest to the saber-toothed tiger, the clouded leopard. To be precise, it is the Taiwanese clouded leopard among the clouded leopards. Unfortunately, for clouded leopards, the only thing seen in history is to see their fur.
The clouded leopard is a cat with unusually developed canine teeth, the length ratio of which is closest to the saber-toothed tiger among all the beasts of prey, and the area where the young man of the Taiwan alpine tribe lived is one of the areas where the Taiwan clouded leopard was once active in history.
Comparing the skull of the clouded leopard (top) with the fossil skull of a saber-toothed tiger (bottom), it is easy to think of as an animal if left unnoticed
▲ Two other photos also show that in the Taiwan region of China, locals once hunted the fur of this "saber-toothed leopard" to make clothing
Calling the clouded leopard a "saber-toothed leopard" is just a joke. They are actually quite distantly related to saber-toothed tigers, and the reason why they have evolved into this is mainly because of the similar natural environment, which has produced a convergent evolutionary way. This is also more evident in other saber-toothed animals, such as the pocketed sword tiger found in Australia, which is actually very far from the saber-toothed tiger, but they all have teeth like a sword.
▲ The teeth of the Pocket Sword Tiger are as exaggerated as a saber
In addition, it has been noted that saber-toothed tigers are supposed to live in social groups, while the clouded leopard seems to be a very solitary and hidden animal, and there must be considerable differences in their nature, so the similarity may only be on the teeth.
However, the clouded leopard has very unique, saber-toothed tiger-like teeth, and its upper and lower jaws are more stretched than many mammals, which shows that they must have a very unique hunting method when hunting in the wild. Unfortunately, since our photojournalists can only observe the posture of clouded leopards in zoos, their unique predation characteristics are not very significantly presented.
Whether they really have the ecological characteristics of saber-toothed tigers, and even whether they can deduce the secret of saber-toothed animal survival from the way of life of clouded leopards, is still a difficult question. Rao is so, people summarize the clouded leopard hunting characteristics are still very different.
▲ The clouded leopard's teeth are narrow and long, similar to a curved dagger, and when preying on prey such as giant squirrels, these two machetes can often cause a one-hit killing effect
It was found that when it hunted ground prey, it did not move after going to the ground like other cats, but directly pounced from the tree, embedded its teeth into the prey, and then caused the opponent's trauma to expand with a head-shaking motion, and lost a lot of blood and lost its ability to resist. Will saber-toothed tigers have similar hunting moves? This remains an unsolved mystery.
The clouded leopard is fierce, but its leather is exceptionally beautiful, with large cloud-like markings on the left and right. Although there are 3-4 separate species in the genus where the clouded leopard belongs, they are not very different in practice, but the cloud-like markings differ in color or size.
For example, the Taiwanese clouded leopard was originally thought to have a significant difference in tail length from its Himalayan relatives. Eventually, however, it was discovered that this was only because the tail of the specimen originally observed was incomplete.
Clouded leopard in China's historical records have been repeatedly recorded, known as lotus leaf leopard, turtle leopard, etc., some people think that the "Journey to the West" in the ai leaf flower skin leopard essence is the clouded leopard into the essence, this is because the clouded leopard also has a name is "Aiye leopard".
However, the author personally does not agree with this inference, because "Journey to the West" mentions that "Ai Ye can eat tigers", which is a difficult task for the clouded leopard with a maximum body length of only 1.2 meters.
Although the clouded leopard is named leopard, it is not actually a leopard, it belongs to the more primitive clouded leopard genus, a special species of predator in the feline family that embarked on a solo evolutionary path 6 million years ago. At the same time, it is also about one of the rarest and most difficult to find animals in the world, good at moving in the tropical subtropical jungle, nocturnal, body size between cats and tigers, flexible movements, and extremely sensitive, so few scientists have the opportunity to witness the clouded leopard in the wild.
Taking Taiwan as an example, although it is known as the hometown of the Taiwan clouded leopard, only the fur skeleton and the only few remaining photos have been found so far, which proves that the locals have had some kind of association with the clouded leopard. So far, however, neither specimens of clouded leopards have been captured locally nor have they been photographed in the wild.
There are more suitable environments for clouded leopards in mainland China, and they were even widely distributed in the Gangnam area before the 1960s, but unfortunately no photos of clouded leopards were taken on the mainland before entering the zoo era. This is because before 1990, China has always had a policy of encouraging the hunting of tigers and leopards, and clouded leopards are also among the ranks of "pests", when dozens of hundreds of skins of clouded leopards will be acquired every year.
For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, Guizhou could receive about 100-200 clouded leopard skins every year, and until the 1990s, it could still receive about 100 clouded leopard skins. This kind of hunting has undoubtedly greatly reduced the population of the clouded leopard, coupled with its nocturnal nature, the characteristics of a solitary and hidden life, and the chances of people wanting to see the clouded leopard in the wild are now too small.
After China's reform and opening up in the mainland, there have been some photos of wild clouded leopards, most of which are the skin of the clouded leopard after being hunted, or the clouded leopard that has been found and rescued by humans because of disease and hunger.
▲ In 1999, it was reported that a clouded leopard was rescued in the southern Anhui region of Anhui Province, China
China's Taiwan Province once deployed 1249 infrared cameras to track Yushan and other nature reserves for 12 years. But although traces of various animals, including black bears, were photographed, not a single clouded leopard was photographed. So in 2014, the Taiwanese clouded leopard was declared extinct.
It is possible that an earlier photograph of the Chinese clouded leopard has been preserved in Nepal.
▲ The clouded leopard is said to have wandered from the other side of the Himalayas in the early last century, entered Nepal, and was hunted by hunters
There are also lucky opportunities to observe wild clouded leopards. In the 1960s, Xu Longhui, a zoologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who visited Hainan Island, was able to witness the sight of wild clouded leopards in the area.
In the article "Hainan Expedition Team Members' Self-Described Experiences", it is described that he experienced at that time:
At that time, Xu Longhui and a colleague, plus a local tour guide, were inspecting Wuzhi Mountain and heard the cries of giant squirrels nearby. He went to look for it and saw a squirrel the size of a puppy crouching on a tall red branch. The dorsal hairs are dark black, forming a clear dividing line with the orange-yellow belly hairs, and a long black tail is dragged behind him. Seeing that someone came, he did not panic and fled, only stopped eating for a moment and then took care of himself.
While observing, Xu Longhui's vision appeared a spotted animal, which was lying still on the horizontal branches of a large tree about 100 meters away, and its body hair was interlaced with black and white clouds. Clouded Leopard!
The clouded leopard is a carnivorous cat that looks like a big cat or a small tiger. The white body hair on the back is decorated with black and yellow-rimmed cloud spots, which makes people feel that it has a tiger-like majesty, it often moves in the trees, and the thick tail helps it to balance when jumping between the branches; if necessary, it can also climb on the horizontal branches with its back facing down and belly up, and it is an arboreal carnivore, which can fly in the tree to catch monkeys and squirrels, and even fly to kill pheasants with slower movements.
Meeting a clouded leopard in the wild is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these animal workers. Xu Longhui carefully followed the direction in which it had fled, but never found its whereabouts again.
Today, for more than a decade on the land of China, including Taiwan and Hainan Island, no specimens of the clouded leopard have been captured, and some suspect that the animal has gradually disappeared from the land.
▲ The speculative distribution area of different species of clouded leopard
However, compared with other endangered wild animals in China, the clouded leopard has a certain luck, and its distribution area not only includes the Jiangnan region of China, but also includes the Indochina Peninsula, Indonesia and Nepal. In these places, the clouded leopard can still be found today.
At the same time, even in China, the situation of the clouded leopard is more optimistic, and it is generally believed that this saber-toothed tiger-like big cat is unlikely to go extinct like the white-tipped dolphin. This is first of all because the idea of nature conservation in China has become more and more popular, and more importantly, in different regions, there are still recent reports of clouded leopard activities.
▲ For example, in the southern Tibet region, the infrared system deployed in China once captured the lens of the clouded leopard
In Taiwan, friends of the Alpine tribe also tell that in the surrounding jungle, there are still clouded leopards, animals that they regard as gods.
In February 2019, two unconfirmed sightings were reported in the news of Taiwan, China. This is a report made in Taitung County by rangers from two different units: one was when a clouded leopard was observed to switch from a tree to hunting, climbing a cliff to hunt wild goats, and the other was when two rangers saw a clouded leopard running across a mountain road in front of their car.
Since the clouded leopard is a particularly stealthy animal, although they have been hunted many times, will the surviving clouded leopard have more experience with people? Will it survive more stealthily?
Considering that the clouded leopard survived the Ice Age with a pair of large teeth, considering the moment when saber-toothed animals were all extinct, today, we expect them to have the same good luck.
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