Archive for the 'Big cats' category

Did you ever see cheetah cubs? Here are six of them in one single video.

I recently noticed (in the ads appearing in my web site; some are quite good) the web site of the Jaguar Research Center. I went in October 2007 to Brazil, in Pantanal, at the heart of the Jaguar Research Center. So, I wanted to give a small feedback about this experience.

This is certainly the location where it is easier to find jaguars, these large felines from South America. If you want to see these very discreet animals, you’d better contact the Jaguar Research Center or one of the travel agents that can send you there (like Objectif Nature, my preferred French travel agent for photo-nature trips).

I have to admit that the jaguar being very shy and despite the high concentration of these big cats in Pantanal, it is somewhat difficult to find them: In October 2007, our photo group did not see it once in three days (even if the trackers and a boat of the supporting organisation saw it nearly every day).

All in all, it’s not so desperate even for a photographer like me who was really willing to catch a few fur spots on the digital sensor of my camera. Along with the flagship feline of the South American continent, this zone is a marvellous water paradise, with the Cuiaba, wide Brazilian river, and many calm locations to observe birds and other animals.

So, I heartily recommend the Jaguar Research Center and I will probably return to JRC -with the hope of finally meeting some free jaguars. And their web site is very nice.

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• Mounted Prints,
• Canvas Prints,
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Buy my photos at RedBubble

A campaign to protect Earth and save energy by CLM BBDO.

A few top-quality images taken by James Pan. Felines, lovely big cats and other animals shot in perfect portraits.

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Feline teeth are their most prominent exterior feature. Since the prehistoric Smilodon (the smiling feline) and its gigantic canines, big cats use their impressive dental characteristics to hunt.

On the Laelaps web site, you will find a detaileld article on feline teeth, from yesterday to nowadays: What big teeth you have. Please, also notice the hunting videos (lions hunting elephant, lions hunting a giraffe).

The dreaded fashion of Lolcats has found a new sub-genre with the Halo-inspired Lolcats: Halolcats. The video game, Halo, mixed with Lolcats…

Great Britain does not look like the place to look for big cats, but there are some large felines clearly not indigenous roaming freely in the United Kingdom. It is such a big thing that there is an investigative group collecting evidence about them: panthers, lions, cheetahs in the cold weather of England or Scotland.

Big cats in Britain

Yesterday, we were speaking here about prehistoric big cats in places where they disappeared (e.g. Europe). Today, I want to point at a surprising proposal made by Josh Donlan.

Recognizing that many big cats were roaming in North America tens of thousands of years ago, he want to re-introduce lions, cheetahs, elephants and other large animals in North America. He admits that this could be a bit difficult and that there is no way to rebuild the original population. But he offers ideas about how to bring camels and lions (from the closest relatives species) to a country were they were last seen hundreds of centuries ago.

Of course, it sounds a lot like Jurassic Park for real. Are you ready to find in the United States cheetahs hunting pronghorn bucks in the Wild West (wild again) or in Montana?

Found on Tretrapod Zoology, a series of articles about prehistoric felines among which one can find big cats like lions, pumas, jaguars, cougars, cheetahs or leopards on continents where they totally disappeared later.

• Europe, where the sabre-tooths, lions and leopards are
• Pumas of South Africa, cheetahs of France, jaguars of England

To start a week of feline news on Roumazeilles.net, I offer you a National Geographic video of a new born asiatic lion is shown in the Japanese zoo of Yokohama.

Source: http://www.coreybehnke.com/.

A zoo cheetah cannot be released in the wild if it is not able to hunt. And this is the fastest running hunter – if trained. So, how do you exercise a cheetah in order to prepare it for possible wild life?

The Marwell Zoo in Hampshire (United Kingdom) is proud to be the location of birth for a marvelously nice kitten: 14 weeks, already some impressive teeth and not yet a name.

It was just a few days ago that the small big cat has been autorized to go out (under the attention of its mother Asha) and to be seen by the public.

The event was even more significant because this is probably the feline whose disparition is the nearest. Originating in Eastern Siberia (near the Korean border), the species seems to only have 35 females left (and a few more males) and that will certainly not be enough to ensure the survival of the species in the wild.

Source: Daily Mail.

When it comes to saving animals from extinction, many efforts are needed. Some of them seem very interesting to me. This is the case of the Northern Jaguar Project. They try to protect a large piece of land in Northern Occidental Mexico in order to ensure a large zone where jaguars could survive in a region that is considered as the nothern-most habitat of the jaguar.

They buy large pieces of land from ranches to help a group of around 120 jaguars live in a more confortable manner out of reach of most poachers and human expansion.

Actually, you can help them buy one acre (1/2 hectare or 4000 square meters) of ranch land for $49 in their Save-a-Spot for Jaguars program.

These images come from the classic works of the German veterinary anatomists, Wilhelm Ellenberger and Hermann Baum, and medical illustrator, Hermann Dittrich. The texts, from which these illustrations were derived, are works published in 1898 and 1911 through 1925, all entitled ‘Handbuch der Anatomie der Tiere für Künstler‘ which can be translated as “Handbook (or Atlas) of Animal Anatomy for Artists” and are online at the University of Wisconsin – Madison Botany Department Teaching Collection. There are about eighty images in total relating to the lion, goat, horse, deer, dog and cow.

Source: BiblioOdyssey.