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Wild Cat Species By Size |
Wild Cat Species by Size | To Home Page | To Wild Cat Species | To Largest Domestic Cat Breed | To World Biggest Cat
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| What is
interesting is how the wild cat weights (a) vary a lot between cat to
cat and (b) there is a wide weight range within a single species. The
wide
range of weights within a species of wild cat is usually found in those
species that occupy wide ranges. And some wild cats occupy enormous
ranges (geographic distribution) such as the puma (cougar), which
occupies the biggest range of
any terrestrial mammal in the western hemisphere (see Puma
Cat Range). The wide
distribution translates to a variety of prey availability and size,
which dictates the size of the wild cat. Another example is the jaguar. Male jaguars in Venezuela are almost twice the weight of those in Belize (104 kg to 56 kg). The bottom three cats are the smallest, with probably the Rusty spotted cat the smallest of all wild cats but there is not a lot of research so the figures for the rarer wild cats are, it seems, open to amendment. In lbs (pounds) the smallest of the small wild cats recorded (src: Wild Cats of the World) weighed 1.76 pounds (Rusty Spotted cat) and the biggest of the tigers according to this book weighed 705 pounds, which is 400 times heavier! See Largest Domestic Cat Breed for a discussion on domestic cat breed weights. A comparison of wild cat species by size, is, I think, interesting. 1 kilogram = 2.20462262 pounds by the way!From Wild Cat Species by Size to Wild Cat Species |