Tag archives for cats
RIP Duecy: The Kitten With Two Faces
Posted by Guest Blogger on June 14, 2013 Like most newborn kittens, Duecy had a furry little face with a sweet little nose. But unlike most kittens, she had a second face. Duecy the kitten was born and died this week in Amity, Oregon, KGW.com reported. She was what’s known as a Janus cat—like the Roman god of the same name, she had…
Where Will Cougars Show Up Next?
Posted by Douglas Chadwick on March 21, 2013 
Mountain lions are spreading east of the Rockies—a challenge for wildlife managers and communities. Some friends who live a few blocks from me in the small town of Whitefish, Montana, had a house cat named Dandelion. After it went missing for two days, the family began a search through their wooded lot. In a nearby…
Posted by The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), along with a coalition of wildlife groups, has petitioned to list the African lion ((Panthera leo leo) under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). Listing the species as Endangered would prohibit lion trophy importation into the U.S., an essential step to reversing the current decline of the population, according to IFAW. The African lion is the only big cat not protected under the ESA.
The king of the African savannah is in serious trouble because people are taking over the continent’s last patches of wilderness on unprecedented scale, according to a detailed study released this week. The most comprehensive assessment of lion (Panthera leo) numbers to date determined that Africa’s once-thriving savannahs are undergoing massive land-use conversion and burgeoning human population growth. The decline has had a significant impact on the lions that make their home in these savannahs; their numbers have dropped to as low as 32,000, down from hundreds of thousands estimated just 50 years ago.
Earlier this year Rolex announced the five winners of the 2012 Rolex Awards for Enterprise, who are being honored in New Delhi, India, on November 27. This profile looks at the work of 2012 Laureate Sergei Bereznuk, director of the Phoenix Fund, a small environmental NGO in Russia. Bereznuk and his team of six people are carrying out an impressive range of activities to preserve the endangered Siberian tiger over a territory of 64,000 square miles (166,000 square kilometers).
Cheetahs on the Edge--Director's Cut by Gregory Wilson for National Geographic Magazine.
Video of Sprinting Cheetahs a First in Wildlife Photography Reporting by Roff Smith with Glenn Oeland The slow-motion video is entrancing, revealing the fluid grace of the world’s fastest land animal. Every part of the sprinting cat’s anatomy—supple limbs, rippling muscles, hyperflexible spine—works together in a symphony of speed. The extraordinary footage—captured last summer…
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“Howzit? How are the cheetahs?” ask my new friends in Cape Town. “I’m going to Bray for a few days.” “Where??” When even a South African hasn’t heard of this place, I know I’m in for another adventure. Bray is a frontier post located 200 meters from the border of Botswana in the Southern…
National Geographic Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Johns has been on some pretty big photo shoots, but this one, he says, took the cake for sophistication, human effort on every front, and cutting-edge technology. He made the comment in the Cincinnati Zoo video (above) of what it took to film the setting of a new…
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Nine million years ago, an almost unimaginable-to-humans living situation arose in the woodlands of central Spain. There, the fossil record shows that saber-toothed cats and bear dogs were cohabitating—sharing food and living space and challenging the very stereotypes we hold about cats and dogs today. A team of paleontologists from the University of Michigan,…
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This week, National Geographic magazine published extraordinary new images of wild Asiatic cheetahs in Iran. That National Geographic was able to photograph these rarest of cheetahs is testament to 11 years of conservation work by the Iranian Department of Environment. As the only country on Earth that has managed to keep this remarkable cat alive, Iran deserves to be congratulated. (Photo by Frans Lanting, from the November 2012 issue of National Geographic Magazine.)
Deep in the Karoo of South Africa’s Eastern Cape is a land starting over. The air is dry, the ground recovering from drought, and on high plateaus great plains of golden grass are home to large herds of zebra, red hartebeest, blesbuck and wildebeest. The animals never descend to the bushland below which is also…
AfriCat (& Okonjima Lodge) is a family affair. The Hanssens, a Namibian farming family, settled on the property of Okonjima in the 1970s. They experienced first-hand the hardships and the rewards of cattle farming in Namibia. Unique insiders to the region, in contrast to most NGOs who arrive new on the scene, the Hanssens are…
The latest from cheetah country comes to you in 3 parts: Part I: Ghanzi District, Botswana. Late October, 2011 – Cheetah Conservation Botswana It is Sunday at last, time to rest. A lazy feeling takes hold of cheetah camp, even Murphy is pretty low key and Cat…
Posted by The photo you see above is of an adorable stray cat that’s living like a squatter at Bangladesh’s biggest children’s hospital. The kitty could be called adorable, if a little standoffish. It’s also something of a scourge: Cats shouldn’t be allowed to roam the open halls and wards of a hospital, certainly not one…
Posted by As of today, the National Geographic Society has issued 10,000 grants funding research and exploration since 1890–including ten National Geographic grant projects that, according to an internal panel, “have made the greatest difference in understanding the Earth.” Barbara Moffet interviews Krithi Karanth, a 32-year-old conservation biologist based in Bangalore, India, the recipient of National Geographic’s 10,000th grant.
National Geographic photographer Nick Nichols is working on a new project in Africa, photographing Serengeti lions. But this assignment is something new, even for a magazine known for pushing the boundaries of photography. Backed up by a team of National Geographic experts, Nichols is deploying a remotely operated miniature helicopter to dangle a camera above a pride of predator, and a toy car to drive a camera within a paw swat of the big cats. The results he hopes for: pictures of Africa’s wild lions such as no one has ever seen.
This is the first installment from reporting on cheetah conservation and human/predator co-existence from Southern Africa.
The University of Arizona mascot is the Wild Cat, or bobcat, so it is only fitting that the university is involved in research and conservation initiatives for the benefit of wild cats all over the world. “Our mission is to conserve and research all 36 species of wild cats worldwide,” Lisa Haynes, of the University…
Photos taken on 18 January 2011 by a remote camera traps we have set up as part of an ongoing conservation science project to study the Andean bear illustrate that our sense of hearing, along with our sense of smell, is relatively weak compared to those of the large mammals living in the Peruvian forest, and that they react to us even when we don’t know they are there.
Elvis Kisimir is the African People & Wildlife Fund’s Human Wildlife Conflict Officer. He is a young Maasai man, well known and respected in the Maasai Steppe where the National Geographic Big Cats Initiative and Dr. Laly Lichtenfeld of the African People & Wildlife Fund have teamed up to save lions.
South Africa’s Enigmatic Big Cats Under Growing Threat
Posted by Leon Marshall of Environmental Journalist, News Watch South African Contributor on June 16, 2011 
Leopard and cheetah are two of southern Africa’s most enigmatic cat species. But both are under growing threat from livestock farmers, trophy hunters and both the legal and illegal trade in wildlife species. Now conservationists are pushing for tighter controls.
My continuing look into the world of cheetah conservation and an exploration into the lives of ambassador cheetah in the US brought me to Animal Ark, a 70 acre wildlife sanctuary, located roughly between the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation and the city of Reno, Nevada. Directors Aaron and Diana Hiibel founded Animal Ark 31 years…
India’s Latest Tiger Count Is Seriously Inadequate
Posted by Stuart Pimm on March 28, 2011 
The latest census of wild tigers in India, home to half the world’s wild tigers, shows that the number of big cats has increased by more than two hundred in four years. But the good news may be obscuring serious threats to the country’s iconic feline.
Through photographs, conservation photographer Marcy Mendelson documents the work of cheetah ambassadors, wild animals trained to teach appreciation of the species by allowing people to approach and see up close the magnificence of the world’s fastest land mammal.
National Geographic Big Cats Initiative grantee Anne Kent Taylor continues her blogging from the Maasai Mara, Kenya. Her project to fence traditional livestock enclosures is designed to keep lions, leopards, and hyenas at bay. Now she finds that honey badgers are also being thwarted.
