the name of which I had never heard of before,
a farmer in the Chita region of Russia (north of Mongolia)
found that a new litter of kittens had been born in his barn, they were unlike any kittens he'd seen before, He called the office of the Daursky Nature
Reserve, and an officer came who identified the kittens as Pallas's cats, also
called manul, (Otocolobus manul) they waited for the mother to return, but she didn't, so the
kittens were taken to the wildlife office, the Fedotov family volunteered two
nursing mother cats, and brought them in (with a remaining kitten) to feed the
wild kittens,
the nature reserve sheltered the kittens for six months,
then released them with radio collars,
but it was autumn, and the hand-raised Pallas's cats had trouble hunting in winter, so they were found and brought back to the preserve,
once spring arrived, and the cats were older, they were released again, this time successfully,
have you noticed what separates these cats from all of the domesticated ones you see? the eyes, the pupils of the Manul
are round, not slit-like as in modern domesticated cats, you are looking back 12 million years, it was one
of the first two modern cats to evolve and it hasn’t changed since, the other
species, Martelli’s Cat,(Felis lunensis) is extinct so what you are looking at here is a unique
window in to the past of modern cats, is that neat or what!
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