Japanese Wildcat Rediscovered
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 7th, 2010
Rare Japanese Wildcat Rediscovered
By Brent Swancer
Map of Tsushima Island.
The Year 2009 proved to be a promising one for a rare type of Japanese wildcat, when a living specimen of Tsushima leopard cat was discovered in an area where the animals had long been feared extinct.
The Tsushima leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis euptilura) is an isolated subspecies of Asian leopard cat found only on the small island of Tsushima, Japan. The 273.6 sq mile island is located in the Korean Strait, 49.5 km (31 miles) from the Korean peninsula and 138 km (86 miles) from Japan’s Kyushu Island. The island’s population is 40,000. Tsushima leopard cats are similar in size and appearance to housecats, which they are often mistaken for. They are one of two endemic species of wildcat native to Japan, the other being the Iriomote wildcat found on Iriomote Island.
Tsushima Island is divided by artificial waterways into two separate islands; Kamijima, and Shimojima. The larger and more sparsely populated upper island, Kamijima, is home to an estimated 80 to 110 of the endangered wildcats. Until recently, it was thought that Kamijima was the sole remaining habitat of Tsushima leopard cats. The more populous lower island, Shimojima, is more heavily developed and it was thought for decades that the leopard cats had disappeared from there. The last confirmed physical specimen of Tsushima leopard cat on the lower island was a dead cat found on a roadway in 1984. No more cats were seen on Shimojima until 2007, when a trail cam snapped a picture of one, marking the first confirmation of cats in the area in over two decades.
The trail cam photos of a Tsushima cat (Prionailurus bengalensis euptilura) captured in 2007.
The recent discovery of a live leopard cat on Tsushima’s lower island marks the first physical evidence of wildcats living here since 1984. The recently found cat was a 1,130 gram juvenile male, which has been estimated to have been born just this past spring. The cat, which was suffering from severe malnourishment, was found on a company property in the town of Izuhara. The cat will be nursed back to health by authorities.
Along with the related Iriomote wildcat, Tsushima leopard cats are important animals of discovery within cryptozoology. The two types of cat were not confirmed by science until the 1960s. Both varieties of cat are critically endangered and rarely seen, with numbers hovering around only a hundred individuals. The cats are threatened by habitat destruction and roads that bisect their territory. Road kills remain the most pressing threat to the animals’ continuing survival. On Tsushima’s upper island of Kamijima, 42 of the leopard cats have been killed on roadways since 1991.
Japanese biologists are hoping that this latest discovery of a live Tsushima leopard cat on the lower island is an indicator that more will be found, and that a breeding population may even still exist here.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Great news that these little guys are still hanging on in there
It is very interresting to hear about, with pictures, this (new to me) small wild cat. At the same time rather worrying that the cat that was found was badly malnourished. Though if this was due to territorial disputes maybe would not be so ominous. I expect the two cat poplations are different and unique-unless some natural process or man has changed things.
Are you aware of any reason other than the obvious why there are such a high relative number of road kills and could any remedial action be taken?
I do not think you mentioned any cat reserves, but the animal being small could be more easily accommodated by this means. Even though it possibly punches above its weight and there could be a clash with keepers of large game birds like the pheasants.
GREAT POST! I have always loved any news on the forgotten or little know small wild cats. The media usually is crying about the loss of the some several thousand tigers that are spread out over vast ranges {with thousands in zoos and even many more thousands in private hands}. Most of the small cats are very secretive and rarely seen with numbers only in the few hundreds at most. But they are not easy to film or study. With less than 100 of these rare japanese wild cats on the northern isle, How can they survive if almost half were run over in only last two decades? On the subject of the two populations; I would like two know more about the artificial waterways separating them. Is it very wide[feet vs. mile] and when was the waterway was cut? Hopefully these little wild cats get some official protection and funding. And maybe some of the people that given thousands for the poor tigers will also sent a couple of bucks to protect the little wild cats of the world.
Hi all, glad you liked this article. I figured I would address some of the comments here from norman-uk and gkingdano, and maybe shed a little more light on what I’ve already written here.
norman-uk- I’m not surprised that you’ve never heard of these cats. A lot of people who actually live on the island haven’t even heard of them. Some people even think they are just stray house cats. Needless to say, this low awareness among the populace doesn’t help conservation efforts.
As to your remark about the two types of cat being different, I’m not clear on what you mean there. If you mean the Tsushima cats and Iriomote cats, then the answer is yes they are different. The Tsushima cats mentioned here are a subspecies of Asian leopard cat and the Iriomote wildcat is regarded as a separate, though related, species. Some have even gone so far as to propose that the Iriomote cat be a separate genus. If you mean the differences between Tsushima cats on the upper and lower island, then they are the same. The geographic barrier of waterways is man made, and so the cats have not been isolated anywhere near long enough for them to have started any process speciating.
About roads. Road kills are a problem for several reasons. First of all, people just simply don’t think about the cats. There is a general low awareness among locals about the Tsushima leopard cat’s plight, and so they are no more careful than they would be about hitting a stray house cat. In many cases, even when they hit one they tend to think it was just a house cat and don’t really freak out too much about it.
In addition, the roads tend to be built through areas that happen to be some of the cats’ favorite haunts. The cats roam a lot, and therefore find it hard to avoid the roads that are cut right through their territory. The road problem is likely going to get worse. There are increasing numbers of new residents as well as tourists on the island, and more people means more roads being built.
There have been several measures taken to try and combat the road deaths threatening these wildcats. One such measure involves putting down “rumble strips,” which are basically bumpy strips on the pavement that vibrate your car when it drives over them. The idea is that these will have a dual effect; to alert the driver that they should slow down, and to create a noise that will hopefully startle the cats and make them get out of the way faster. There have also been attempts to build tunnels under the roads for the cats to use, but it is unclear how effective these have been. So far measures such as these have seemed to fail to significantly lower the amount of Tsushima leopard cat deaths due to road kill.
Another threat the cats face is house cats. The house cats directly compete for food with the leopard cats, and they can pass feline diseases onto them as well. Feline transmittable diseases have actually turned out to be a major worry n recent years for both the Tsushima cats and Iriomote cats. Dogs pose a risk as well, but they are not as numerous on the islands.
Other efforts have been made to protect the cats. For instance they were designated a Living National Monument in 1971, and in 1994 (too late if you ask me) they were made an endangered species. There has been a government funded recovery program put into place as well.
There is also a huge national park on the island, where development is banned, but it is not as easy saying because the animals are small they must be easy to accommodate. The problem is that the cats just don’t seem to want to stay in the park. They wander all over the place, including populated areas where, you guessed it, they cross roads.
A similar problem exists on Iriomote Island, where the quite generously sized national park there is located in the island’s interior, whereas the Iriomote cats prefer the habitat of low lying coastal areas where all of the people and development are. There is not much the government can do in either case since the residents want to develop the land and don’t generally care much about what happens to the cats. It is difficult to expand the parks, and the only way to make sure the cats were totally safe would be to have the parks encompass the whole island including populated areas, which would defeat the purpose.
Captive breeding programs are being attempted as well, but all in all conservation efforts to save the cats on both islands have proved to be pretty tricky and not particularly effective as of yet.
gkingdano- As for the numbers, that figure of around 100 individuals is of course the population figure after subtracting the number of road kills. Yeah, it’s that bad. At this rate of several Tsushima cat road kills a year, even accounting for reproductive rates, things just don’t look good for the cats in the coming decades. And as I said before, the numbers of roads are only increasing.
The cats on the lower island, where this one was found, face even greater pressure since development is heavier there.
Hope this has helped. 🙂