Flat-headed cat

Appearance

The flat-headed cat is reddish-brown on top of the head, dark roan brown on the body with a mottled white underbelly. Its face is lighter in colour than the body, and its muzzle and chin are white. The flat-headed cat is a small wild cat with short reddish-brown fur.

The head itself is lengthened and cylindrical, and the teeth are unusually long. The body is slender, and the extremities are delicate and lengthened.

The flat-headed cat was first described in 1827 based on a zoological specimen collected in Sumatra.

Range and habitat

The flat-headed cat's distribution is restricted to lowland tropical rainforests in extreme southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo. It primarily inhabits freshwater habitats near coastal and lowland areas. In peninsular Malaysia, flat-headed cats were recorded in Pasoh Forest Reserve in 2013 less than 1.5 km (0.93 mi) away from oil palm plantations.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet

Anecdotal historical accounts report that they are nocturnal, but an adult captive female was crepuscular and most active between 8:00 and 11:30 and between 18:00 and 22:00 hours. Live fish are readily taken, with full submergence of the head, and the fish were usually carried at least 2 m (6 ft 7 in) away, suggesting a feeding strategy to avoid letting aquatic prey escape back into water.

Captive specimens show much greater interest in potential prey in the water than on dry land, suggesting a strong preference for riverine hunting in their natural habitat. Their morphological specializations suggest that their diet is mostly composed of fish, but they are reported to hunt for frogs, and are thought to catch crustaceans.

In crisis

The flat-headed cat is threatened by habitat destruction due to conversion for settlements, agriculture and oil palm plantations. It has been listed on the IUCN Red List as Endangered since 2008. The flat-headed cat is foremost threatened by destruction of wetlands and lowland forests, and environmental degradation.

Overfishing in wetlands and expansion of oil palm plantations are considered to be significant threats. Incidental trapping is also a threat, as some flat-headed cats are reported to have been caught in traps set to protect domestic fowl.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Flat-headed 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 Flat-headed cat, Wikidata item Q274177. 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.