Iriomote cat

elephantsinjapan: This little guy/girl is an Iriomote Cat named after the Japanese island, Iriomote, where it lives. The Iriomoto cat is not a separate species, but a subspecies of the Bengal cat. It has been listed as critically endangered on the ICUN Red List since 2008 with an estimated population of only approx 100 cats. The main threats this wild cat faces is interbreeding with domestic feral cats and habitat loss due to tourist development projects on the island.

Iriomote Island, one of Japan's last untouched wild places, is home to the endangered yamaneko wildcat.

Iriomote Cat

Kodkod, also called güiña, is the smallest wild cat in the Americas.

The Iriomote cat is a subspecies of the leopard cat that lives exclusively on the Japanese island of Iriomote. It has been listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2008, as the only population comprises fewer than 250 adult individuals and is considered declining.

Stock photo Iriomote Cat (Prionailurus iriomotensis), Iriomote Island, Okinawa, Japan. Buy a licence on mindenpictures.com

Prof. Naoki Suzuki observed the natural wild life of Iriomote cats by using robot cameras. Spending many years on Iriomote island, he found that one habit of the cat is that they look into all of the hollows of tree trunks in order to find food or to utilise it as a nest. To try to capture this, he placed a robot camera inside a hollow. In 2017 Naoki Suzuki published a book entitled Island of Miracles – Animals of Iriomote island from Seibundo-Shinkosha.

Tsushima Leopard Cats inhabit only the island of Tsushima. They are about the same size as domestic cats; however, the differences are that Tsushima cats have stripes on the middle of their forehead...