FAMILY FELIDAE - CATS,
37 species
Size range: Rusty-spotted Cat and Black-footed Cat (1-2.5kg) to Tiger (75-325kg)
The cat family arose approximately 30 million years ago in what is now Eurasia, and today occurs globally except in the Arctic, Antarctica and Australasia. Cats are divided into two major subfamilies:
| Big cats, subfamily Pantherinae (7 species) , compromising the Panthera genus plus Clouded Leopards. | Small cats, subfamily Felinae (30 species) , which includes the Cheetah and Puma; despite their size, both these species are essentially outsized small cats that evolved larger bodies to fill similar niches to the large Panther cats. |
Thirty-seven cat species are currently recognised, though molecular analyses may produce further revisions. Preliminary genetic data suggest that the Chinese Mountain Cat may be a subspecies of the Wildcat rather than a separate species, while genetic only recently revealed that Clouded Leopards on Borneo and Sumatra were sufficiently distinct from mainland animals to be reclassified as a separate species. Cats are hypercarnivores that subsist almost entirely on animal prey, which is killed by a suffocating bite to the throat in the case of large prey, or by crushing the soul of small prey. Most cats are solitary, territorial and nocturno-crepuscular. The Lion is the only cat that lives in large and complex social groups, though male Cheetahs form small, enduring coalitions, and free-living domestic cats in colonies sometimes form small and stable social groups.