Flat-headed Cat
Encyclopedia
The Flat-headed Cat is a small wild cat
patchily distributed in the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Borneo
and Sumatra
. Since 2008, it has been listed as Endangered
by the IUCN due to destruction of wetland
s in their habitat. It is suspected that the effective population size could be fewer than 2,500 mature individuals, with no subpopulation having an effective population size larger than 250 adult individuals.
Like some other small cats, it was originally placed in the genus
Felis
, but is now considered one of the five species in Prionailurus
.
Flat-headed cats are very rare in captivity, with less than 10 individuals, all kept in Malaysian and Thai zoo
s as recorded by ISIS
.
, which extends along the nose to the extremity of the muzzle, the sides of which are laterally distended. The general habit of body is slender, and the extremities are delicate and lengthened. The head itself is more lengthened and cylindrical than in the domestic cat. The distance between the eyes and the ears is comparatively great. The cylindrical form and lateral contraction of the head is contrasted by an unusual length of the teeth. The canine teeth
are nearly as long as in an individual of double its size.
The thick fur is reddish-brown on top of the head, dark roan brown on the body, and mottled white on the underbelly. The face is lighter in color than the body, and the muzzle and chin are white. Two prominent buff whitish streaks run on either side of the nose between the eyes. The ears are rounded. The eyes are unusually far forward and close together, compared with other cats, giving the felid improved stereoscopic vision. The teeth are adapted for gripping onto slippery prey, and the jaws are relatively powerful. These features help the flat-headed cat to catch and retain aquatic prey, to which it is at least as well adapted as the fishing cat
. Legs are fairly short. Claws are retractable, but the covering sheaths are so reduced in size that about two-thirds of the claws are left protruding.
The anterior upper premolar
s are larger and sharper relative to other cats. The inter-digital webs on its paws help the cat gain better traction in muddy environments and water, and are even more pronounced on this cat than those on the paws of the fishing cat.
It has a head-and-body length of 41 to 50 cm (16.1 to 19.7 in) and a short tail of 13 to 15 cm (5.1 to 5.9 in). It weighs 1.5 to 2.5 kg (3.3 to 5.5 lb).
s in extreme southern Thailand
, Peninsular Malaysia
, Sabah
, Sarawak
, Brunei Darussalam, Kalimantan
and Sumatra
. They primarily occur in freshwater
habitats near coastal and lowland areas. More than 70% of records were collected less than 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) away from water.
Flat-headed cats occur in both primary and secondary forest
.
and most active between 8:00 and 11:30 and between 18:00 and 22:00 hours.
The stomach contents of an adult shot on a Malaysian riverbank consisted only of fish
. They have been observed to wash objects, raccoon
-style. Live fish are readily taken, with full submergence of the head, and the fish were usually carried at least two meters away, suggesting a feeding strategy to avoid letting aquatic prey escape back into water. Captive specimens show much greater interest in potential prey in the water than on dry land, suggesting a strong preference for riverine hunting in their natural habitat. Their morphological specialization suggest that their diet is mostly composed of fish, but they are reported to hunt for frog
s, and are thought to catch crustacean
s. They also catch rat
s and chicken
.
Vocalizations of a flat-headed cat kitten resembled those of a domestic cat. The vocal repertoire of adults has not been analyzed completely, but they purr and give other short-ranged vocalizations.
Their gestation period
lasts about 56 days. Of three litter
s recorded in captivity one consisted of two kittens, the other two were singletons. Two captive individuals have lived for fourteen years.
. Causes of this destruction include human settlement, forest transformation to plantation
s, draining for agriculture
, pollution
, and excessive hunting, wood-cutting and fishing
. In addition, clearance of coastal mangrove
s over the past decade has been rapid in tropical Asia. The depletion of fish stocks from over-fishing is prevalent in many Asian wetland environments and is likely to be a significant threat. Expansion of oil palm
plantations is currently viewed as the most urgent threat.
They are also threatened by trapping
, snaring and poison
ing. They have been captured in traps set out to protect domestic fowl.
by Vigors and Horsfield, who first described the felid in 1827 from Sumatra. In 1951, Ellerman
and Morrison-Scott
grouped Felis planiceps with Felis viverrina, the fishing cat, as being distributed in Lower Siam, the Malay States, Sumatra and Borneo, and recorded from Patani. In 1961, it was subordinated to the genus Prionailurus
by the German biologist
Weigel who compared fur pattern of wild and domestic felids. In 1997, researchers from the National Cancer Institute
confirmed this taxonomic rank
ing following their phylogenetic studies.
Felidae
Felidae is the biological family of the cats; a member of this family is called a felid. Felids are the strictest carnivores of the thirteen terrestrial families in the order Carnivora, although the three families of marine mammals comprising the superfamily pinnipedia are as carnivorous as the...
patchily distributed in the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Borneo
Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....
and Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
. Since 2008, it has been listed as Endangered
Endangered species
An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...
by the IUCN due to destruction of wetland
Wetland
A wetland is an area of land whose soil is saturated with water either permanently or seasonally. Wetlands are categorised by their characteristic vegetation, which is adapted to these unique soil conditions....
s in their habitat. It is suspected that the effective population size could be fewer than 2,500 mature individuals, with no subpopulation having an effective population size larger than 250 adult individuals.
Like some other small cats, it was originally placed in the genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
Felis
Felis
Felis is a genus of cats in the family Felidae, including the familiar domestic cat and its closest wild relatives. The wild species are distributed widely across Europe, southern and central Asia, and Africa; the domestic cat has been introduced worldwide.Members of the genus Felis are all small...
, but is now considered one of the five species in Prionailurus
Prionailurus
Prionailurus is a genus of four species of small, spotted wild cats found in Asia. They are typically forest-dwelling. Most are able to swim well; some species are actually semi-aquatic and feed mainly on fish and other aquatic animals....
.
Flat-headed cats are very rare in captivity, with less than 10 individuals, all kept in Malaysian and Thai zoo
Zoo
A zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....
s as recorded by ISIS
International Species Information System
-External links:*...
.
Characteristics
The flat-headed cat is distinguished at once by the extreme depression of the skullSkull
The skull is a bony structure in the head of many animals that supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.The skull is composed of two parts: the cranium and the mandible. A skull without a mandible is only a cranium. Animals that have skulls are called craniates...
, which extends along the nose to the extremity of the muzzle, the sides of which are laterally distended. The general habit of body is slender, and the extremities are delicate and lengthened. The head itself is more lengthened and cylindrical than in the domestic cat. The distance between the eyes and the ears is comparatively great. The cylindrical form and lateral contraction of the head is contrasted by an unusual length of the teeth. The canine teeth
Canine tooth
In mammalian oral anatomy, the canine teeth, also called cuspids, dogteeth, fangs, or eye teeth, are relatively long, pointed teeth...
are nearly as long as in an individual of double its size.
The thick fur is reddish-brown on top of the head, dark roan brown on the body, and mottled white on the underbelly. The face is lighter in color than the body, and the muzzle and chin are white. Two prominent buff whitish streaks run on either side of the nose between the eyes. The ears are rounded. The eyes are unusually far forward and close together, compared with other cats, giving the felid improved stereoscopic vision. The teeth are adapted for gripping onto slippery prey, and the jaws are relatively powerful. These features help the flat-headed cat to catch and retain aquatic prey, to which it is at least as well adapted as the fishing cat
Fishing Cat
The Fishing Cat is a medium-sized wild cat of South and Southeast Asia. In 2008, the IUCN classified the fishing cat as endangered since they are concentrated primarily in wetland habitats, which are increasingly being settled, degraded and converted...
. Legs are fairly short. Claws are retractable, but the covering sheaths are so reduced in size that about two-thirds of the claws are left protruding.
The anterior upper premolar
Premolar
The premolar teeth or bicuspids are transitional teeth located between the canine and molar teeth. In humans, there are two premolars per quadrant, making eight premolars total in the mouth. They have at least two cusps. Premolars can be considered as a 'transitional tooth' during chewing, or...
s are larger and sharper relative to other cats. The inter-digital webs on its paws help the cat gain better traction in muddy environments and water, and are even more pronounced on this cat than those on the paws of the fishing cat.
It has a head-and-body length of 41 to 50 cm (16.1 to 19.7 in) and a short tail of 13 to 15 cm (5.1 to 5.9 in). It weighs 1.5 to 2.5 kg (3.3 to 5.5 lb).
Distribution and habitat
The distribution of flat-headed cats is restricted to lowland tropical rainforestTropical rainforest
A tropical rainforest is an ecosystem type that occurs roughly within the latitudes 28 degrees north or south of the equator . This ecosystem experiences high average temperatures and a significant amount of rainfall...
s in extreme southern Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, Peninsular Malaysia
Peninsular Malaysia
Peninsular Malaysia , also known as West Malaysia , is the part of Malaysia which lies on the Malay Peninsula. Its area is . It shares a land border with Thailand in the north. To the south is the island of Singapore. Across the Strait of Malacca to the west lies the island of Sumatra...
, Sabah
Sabah
Sabah is one of 13 member states of Malaysia. It is located on the northern portion of the island of Borneo. It is the second largest state in the country after Sarawak, which it borders on its southwest. It also shares a border with the province of East Kalimantan of Indonesia in the south...
, Sarawak
Sarawak
Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang , Sarawak is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia followed by Sabah, the second largest state located to the North- East.The administrative capital is Kuching, which...
, Brunei Darussalam, Kalimantan
Kalimantan
In English, the term Kalimantan refers to the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, while in Indonesian, the term "Kalimantan" refers to the whole island of Borneo....
and Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
. They primarily occur in freshwater
Freshwater
Fresh water is naturally occurring water on the Earth's surface in ice sheets, ice caps, glaciers, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers and streams, and underground as groundwater in aquifers and underground streams. Fresh water is generally characterized by having low concentrations of dissolved salts and...
habitats near coastal and lowland areas. More than 70% of records were collected less than 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) away from water.
Flat-headed cats occur in both primary and secondary forest
Secondary forest
A secondary forest is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a major disturbance such as fire, insect infestation, timber harvest or windthrow, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident...
.
Ecology and behavior
Flat-headed cats are presumably solitary, and probably maintain their home ranges by scent marking. In captivity, both females and males spray urine by walking forward in a crouching position, leaving a trail on the ground. Anecdotal historical accounts report that flat-headed cats are nocturnal, but an adult captive female was crepuscularCrepuscular
Crepuscular animals are those that are active primarily during twilight, that is during dawn and dusk. The word is derived from the Latin word crepusculum, meaning "twilight." Crepuscular is, thus, in contrast with diurnal and nocturnal behavior. Crepuscular animals may also be active on a bright...
and most active between 8:00 and 11:30 and between 18:00 and 22:00 hours.
The stomach contents of an adult shot on a Malaysian riverbank consisted only of fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
. They have been observed to wash objects, raccoon
Raccoon
Procyon is a genus of nocturnal mammals, comprising three species commonly known as raccoons, in the family Procyonidae. The most familiar species, the common raccoon , is often known simply as "the" raccoon, as the two other raccoon species in the genus are native only to the tropics and are...
-style. Live fish are readily taken, with full submergence of the head, and the fish were usually carried at least two meters away, suggesting a feeding strategy to avoid letting aquatic prey escape back into water. Captive specimens show much greater interest in potential prey in the water than on dry land, suggesting a strong preference for riverine hunting in their natural habitat. Their morphological specialization suggest that their diet is mostly composed of fish, but they are reported to hunt for frog
Frog
Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...
s, and are thought to catch crustacean
Crustacean
Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
s. They also catch rat
Rat
Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...
s and chicken
Chicken
The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...
.
Vocalizations of a flat-headed cat kitten resembled those of a domestic cat. The vocal repertoire of adults has not been analyzed completely, but they purr and give other short-ranged vocalizations.
Their gestation period
Gestation period
For mammals the gestation period is the time in which a fetus develops, beginning with fertilization and ending at birth. The duration of this period varies between species.-Duration:...
lasts about 56 days. Of three litter
Litter (animal)
A litter is the offspring at one birth of animals from the same mother and usually from one set of parents. The word is most often used for the offspring of mammals, but can be used for any animal that gives birth to multiple young. In comparison, a group of eggs and the offspring that hatch from...
s recorded in captivity one consisted of two kittens, the other two were singletons. Two captive individuals have lived for fourteen years.
Threats
Flat-headed cats are primarily threatened by wetland and lowland forest destruction and degradationDegradation
Degradation may refer to;* Biodegradation, the processes by which organic substances are broken down by living organisms* Cashiering or degradation ceremony, a ritual performed when cleric is deprived of office or a knight is stripped of the honour...
. Causes of this destruction include human settlement, forest transformation to plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s, draining for agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
, and excessive hunting, wood-cutting and fishing
Fishing
Fishing is the activity of trying to catch wild fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping....
. In addition, clearance of coastal mangrove
Mangrove
Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...
s over the past decade has been rapid in tropical Asia. The depletion of fish stocks from over-fishing is prevalent in many Asian wetland environments and is likely to be a significant threat. Expansion of oil palm
Oil palm
The oil palms comprise two species of the Arecaceae, or palm family. They are used in commercial agriculture in the production of palm oil. The African Oil Palm Elaeis guineensis is native to West Africa, occurring between Angola and Gambia, while the American Oil Palm Elaeis oleifera is native to...
plantations is currently viewed as the most urgent threat.
They are also threatened by trapping
Trapping
Trapping may refer to:* Animal trapping, the remote capture of animals* Trapping , a fighting technique and range* Trap , a color management technique* Mantrap, a security device...
, snaring and poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
ing. They have been captured in traps set out to protect domestic fowl.
Conservation
The flat-headed cat is included on CITES Appendix I. The felid is fully protected by national legislation over its range, with hunting and trade prohibited in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.Taxonomic history
The flat-headed cat was initially placed in the genus FelisFelis
Felis is a genus of cats in the family Felidae, including the familiar domestic cat and its closest wild relatives. The wild species are distributed widely across Europe, southern and central Asia, and Africa; the domestic cat has been introduced worldwide.Members of the genus Felis are all small...
by Vigors and Horsfield, who first described the felid in 1827 from Sumatra. In 1951, Ellerman
Sir John Ellerman, 2nd Baronet
Sir John Reeves Ellerman, 2nd Baronet was an English shipowner, natural historian and philanthropist. The only son and heir of the English shipowner and investor John Ellerman, he was often said to be Britain's richest man...
and Morrison-Scott
Terence Morrison-Scott
Sir Terence Charles Stuart Morrison-Scott DSC DSc FMA was a British zoologist who was Director of the Science Museum and the British Museum of Natural History in London, England....
grouped Felis planiceps with Felis viverrina, the fishing cat, as being distributed in Lower Siam, the Malay States, Sumatra and Borneo, and recorded from Patani. In 1961, it was subordinated to the genus Prionailurus
Prionailurus
Prionailurus is a genus of four species of small, spotted wild cats found in Asia. They are typically forest-dwelling. Most are able to swim well; some species are actually semi-aquatic and feed mainly on fish and other aquatic animals....
by the German biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
Weigel who compared fur pattern of wild and domestic felids. In 1997, researchers from the National Cancer Institute
National Cancer Institute
The National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health , which is one of 11 agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The NCI coordinates the U.S...
confirmed this taxonomic rank
Taxonomic rank
In biological classification, rank is the level in a taxonomic hierarchy. Examples of taxonomic ranks are species, genus, family, and class. Each rank subsumes under it a number of less general categories...
ing following their phylogenetic studies.