Bornean Bay Cat

Bornean bay cats are the mystery cat of the family. No living cats have been seen by biologists, and nothing is known about their habits, behavior, ecology or reproductive biology. Most of the biological information available on this species has been obtained from five skins and two skulls in natural history museums in Europe.


In 1992 an adult female bay cat was brought into the Sarawak Museum, alive but at the point of death, dying soon after. The cat had apparently been caught by native trappers and held in captivity for some months. The appearance of this specimen offered the first opportunity to look at a whole animal.


In December 1998, BBC Wildlife magazine published the first photograph of a live Bornean bay cat. It looked remarkably like an Asian golden cat Catopuma temmincki and is thought to be very closely related. This cat was weighed, measured, photographed, given a physical examination and dewormed before being released back into the forest.


About the size of a large house cat, Bornean bay cats have uniform, dark, chestnut red fur faintly speckled with black markings, and spots on the lighter golden brown underside and limbs. A second colour phase of dark, bluish slate-grey has also been recorded. The short, rounded head is dark greyish brown with two dark stripes originating from the corner of each eye, and the back of the head has a dark ‘M’ shaped marking. The backs of the short rounded ears are dark greyish. The underside of the chin is white and there are two faint brown stripes on the cheeks. Their long, tapering tail has a yellowish streak down its length on the underside, becoming pure white at the tip, which is marked with a small black spot. Body proportions and the extremely long tail give it the look of the new world jaguarundi Herpailurus yaguarondi.


There are thought to be seven or eight locations on Borneo where the bay cat may have been seen. Habitat preference seems to be highland areas of rocky limestone situated on the edge of dense jungle, hill forests up to 500 metres, and lowland and swamp forests. Early naturalists reported that these cats were found only in dense forest. At least three of the specimens were collected along rivers, but it is unknown whether this reflects a habitat preference or the collector's most effective method of transport in the difficult Bornean terrain.


It has always been questioned whether the bay cat is a unique species or merely a smaller island form of the Asian golden cat. With blood samples taken from the 1992 specimen, genetic testing has confirmed that they are indeed a unique species, and therefore a highly endangered one.


Although Borneo has 25 wildlife reserves on paper, only three are actually in existence, with the others only proposed. All of them have been encroached upon by human settlement and logging. Loss of habitat would seem to be the main threat to this little known species, and they may have always been rare. The World Conservation Union Cat Specialist Group has placed a high priority on field research on this species. Fully protected over most of their range, CITES has placed the Bornean bay cat on Appendix II, due to lack of data.
 

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