Endangered
Bay cat
Catopuma badia
The bay cat, also known as the Bornean bay cat, is a small wild cat endemic to the island of Borneo that appears to be relatively rare compared to sympatric wild cats, based on the paucity of historical, as well as recent records.
Appearance
The bay cat's fur is of a bright chestnut colour, but paler beneath, the limbs and the tail being rather paler and more reddish. The ears are rounded, covered with a short blackish-brown fur at the outer side, paler brown within and with a narrow brown margin. The tail is elongated and tapering at the end, with a white central streak occupying the rear half of the lower side, gradually becoming wider and of a purer white towards the tip, that has a small black spot at its upper end.
Their head-to-body length varied from 49.5–67 cm (19.5–26.4 in) with 30–40.3 cm (11.8–15.9 in) long tails.
Range and habitat
In the mid-1990s, the most reliable sightings have been reported in Gunung Palung National Park and the upper Kapuas River in West Kalimantan. Two concentrations were reported in the island's interior at the time, in habitat types varying from swamp forests, lowland dipterocarp forest to hill forests up to at least 500 m (1,600 ft). One unconfirmed sighting occurred at 1,800 m (5,900 ft) on Mount Kinabalu.
The bay cat, also known as the Bornean bay cat, is a small wild cat endemic to the island of Borneo that appears to be relatively rare compared to sympatric wild cats, based on the paucity of historical, as well as recent records. While in the mid-1980s, forests still covered nearly three-quarters of the island, by 2005 only 52% of Borneo was still forested.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Bay cats recorded in Sabah exhibited a diurnal activity pattern with a peak in the morning and another peak in the early afternoon. Bay cats recorded in nine study areas in both protected and non-protected areas in Sarawak were also diurnal.
Nothing is known about its diet and reproductive behavior.
In crisis
Since 2002, it has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List because it is estimated that fewer than 2,500 mature individuals exist, and that the population declined in the past. The bay cat has been recorded as rare and seems to occur at relatively low density, even in pristine habitats. The bay cat is forest-dependent and increasingly threatened by habitat destruction following deforestation in Borneo.
Habitat loss due to commercial logging and conversion to oil palm plantations pose the greatest threat to the bay cat. Poaching for the illegal wildlife trade also poses a significant threat.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Bay cat is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Bay cat, Wikidata item Q23772801. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
