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| Thai Wildlife > Wild Cats |
Traditional hunting and poaching for medicines has left wild cat populations badly depleted. The Leopard Cat is a common wild cat not unlike a domestic animal is size and behavior. It has dark brown stripes broken into spots and is found in a wide range of habitat types.
Clouded Leopards are also large and seriously endangered in the wild as their beautiful skins are in demand. They are nocturnal, rarely seen in the wild and like to use their rasp-like tongue to clean fur and feathers off their prey before eating.
The stocky short-legged Fishing Cat is more ferocious, grey with spots with short coarse fur. The Asian Golden Cat is large and more aggressive, tawny brown in colour without stripes or spots and has a distinctly bicoloured tail.
The Tiger is the largest of all cats with numerous vertical stripes down its yellowish-brown body. Unlike many cats, tigers like water and will seek cooler areas of the forest to sleep in. All wild cats are highly endangered in Thailand but populations of tigers are kept and bred in captivity by private collectors but this has produced hybrid species thus effecting the gene pool.
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