A tiny flat-headed cat with webbed feet has lost much of its historical rain-forest habitat in South-East Asia, a new study finds.
Called Prionailurus planiceps, the flat-headed cat weighs as little as 3.5 pounds (1.59 kg) and has webbed feet thought to be a unique adaptation allowing the animal to hunt fish and crabs along lowland river banks and flooded peat forests.
The wild cat is one of the world's least known feline species, found only in tropical rain forests in southern Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, parts of Indonesia including Sumatra and Borneo. In 2008 the animal was listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Until now, there have been no studies of the cats in the wild, so little is known about its historical and current range, what makes a suitable home for the animal, and what can be done to ensure its survival.In fact, nobody even knows how many of the cats remain in the wild.
"At the current stage, we cannot even do any guesstimates, because we have no idea in which densities the species occurs," said study researcher Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany. "I hope that with further field research in ten years we might be able to provide the first estimations."
To make some headway, an international team of scientists collected historical and recent records along with other scattered information on the cat, finding the animal spends its time mainly in lowland or coastal swampy forests close to freshwater sources.
"With this information we developed a computer model to predict its historical and current distribution," Wilting said.
The team also used the model to determine factors needed to make an area a sufficient home for the cat. With that information, they identified 19 key spots throughout the cat's distribution range that were considered suitable habitat and important for the long-term survival of the rare species. These localities included: Toh Daeng Peat Swamp in Thailand, the Way Kambas National Park and the Hutan Lunang Nature Reserve in Sumatra, and Borneo's Maludam National Park and the Samusam Wildlife Sanctuary.
They found a link between freshwater sources and the occurrence of flat-headed cats, with more than 70 percent of the records (sightings and photographs) occurring less than 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) away from a major river or lake. Precipitation during the driest month and altitude were also important habitat factors.
Nearly 70 percent of the area which historically provided good habitats for the flat-headed cat has been converted into plantations, creating a landscape in which the cats are unable to live, the models showed. The remaining cat-friendly land is highly fragmented and 16 percent is fully protected according to the criteria of the IUCN.
Most large national parks in South-East Asia are located at higher elevations, where the flat-headed cat, with its restriction to lowland and coastal swampy forests, rarely occurs.
"For me the most important message of our paper is not that we predicted the extent of habitat loss, much more important is that we predicted localities where we most likely still find stable populations of this threatened species," Wilting told LiveScience. "Only with this information we can do the next step and work on the protection of these areas."
Wilting and colleagues detail their findings in a recent issue of the journal PLoS ONE.
Flat-headed cat is now endangered
Matt Walker, BBC News 19 Mar 10;
One of the smallest and most enigmatic species of cat is now threatened with extinction.
According to a new study, habitat loss and deforestation are endangering the survival of Asia's flat-headed cat, a diminutive and little studied species.
Over 70% of the cat's habitat has been converted to plantations, and just 16% of its range is now protected.
The cat, which has webbed feet to help hunt crabs and fish, lives among wetland habitats in southeast Asia.
Details on the decline of the cat's range are published in the journal PLoS ONE.
The flat-headed cat is among the least known of all wild cat species, having never been intensively studied in its natural habitat.
Weighing just 1.5 to 2kg, the cat is thought to be nocturnal, adapted to hunting small prey in shallow water and along muddy shores.
Now restricted to a handful of tropical rainforests within Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, nothing is known about the size of each cat's home range or the density of the remaining population.
So in an attempt to estimate how the species is faring, a team of scientists gathered together all known information about where the cat is thought to live, including sightings, pictures taken by camera traps and dead specimens.
The team, led by Mr Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany gathered 107 records overall, which they then used to create a computer model that predicts the cat's historical and current distribution.
That confirmed that flat-headed cats like to live near large bodies of water such as rivers and lakes.
They also prefer coastal and lowland areas.
Crucially for the species's survival though, the researchers found that just 16% of its historical range is fully protected according to criteria laid down by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Other areas are also protected, but these are large national parks, which in southeast Asia tend to be located at higher elevations where the flat-headed cat is not thought to roam.
Around 70% of its former range may already have been converted to plantations to grow crops such as palm oil.
Also, two-thirds of all the locations the cat has been recorded in are now surrounded by areas in which high densities of people live.
The cat's scarcity is underlined by the fact that it has been photographed just 17 times by camera traps.
In comparison, other felids in the region, such as tigers, leopard cats, marbled cats and Asian golden cats are regularly photographed this way.