Weird News

Tiny wild cat becomes overnight celebrity

(AP): A tiny wild cat hidden away in the cloud forests of Bolivia has become an unlikely tourist attraction, drawing a stream of visitors hoping for a glimpse of the animal that scientists have identified as a brand-new species.

There is just one problem: Tigrino, as he has been affectionately dubbed, doesn’t like the attention. A previously unknown cat species has been identified in plain sight: at a wildlife sanctuary in Bolivia, where the small, spotted feline had been living for years after being taken in by a local family. The discovery, reported last Thursday in the journal Current Biology, marks the first time scientists have named and described a new living wild cat species in more than a century.

The small, spotted feline with large, leopardlike spots is easily stressed, so caretakers at the wildlife sanctuary near La Paz keep him out of public view, turning away the crowds eager for a closer look. When The Associated Press visited on Sunday, Tigrino cautiously emerged from his shelter, sniffed the air and paced around for a few minutes before slipping back into the foliage. Tigrino belongs to Leopardus tilcayo, the first living wild cat species described by scientists in more than a century. At just 18 inches (46 centimetres) from head to the base of his tail and three pounds (1.4 kilograms), he is smaller than the average house cat.

The discovery set off a flurry of excitement on social media. Visitors from across Bolivia and beyond have flocked to the Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary, where Tigrino has lived since 2017 when a family brought him there after trying unsuccessfully to make a house cat of him.

“Tigrino has become, in just a few days, an ambassador for conservation,” said sanctuary co-founder Marcelo Levy, adding that the new species designation has helped raise awareness about the need to protect wild cats and their habitat in Bolivia’s tropical forests.

“He’s such a tiny animal, and he has become something so important,” Levy said.

Baby raccoons go through training

(AP): Muddy, sweat-soaked and occasionally bloody, the dedicated staff at a Mississippi wildlife centre are drill sergeants, and their soldiers? Baby raccoons.

Welcome to raccoon boot camp, where the goal is to help sick or injured animals learn to survive in the south Mississippi wilderness — a skill set they would have learnt from their mothers, most of whom died or were separated from their kits by storms, traffic accidents or other traumatic events. It’s a challenge that’s left Woodside Wildlife Rescue’s founder, Paula Woodside, with cuts from scared, defensive raccoons and their sharp claws and, when she isn’t able to save a kit, emotional scars too.

“When these babies come in, and they’re so desperate, it’s heartbreaking,” said Woodside, who most days is covered in sweat from caring for the animals in the Mississippi heat, and dirt from curious kits crawling up her legs and onto her shoulders. “It’s really important for them to get a little bit of a head start.”

Woodside, a former US merchant mariner, opened the rescue in 2019 after she helped rehabilitate a baby raccoon found aboard her ship. The rescue in the coastal city of Pass Christian typically raises dozens of kits each year, 76 so far this year, alongside other indigenous wildlife. City animal control and citizens call Woodside, or the rescue’s director, Raquel Priest, when they find a raccoon in need of saving. Together, they attempt to reunite the kits with their mothers, if they can find them, or bring the kits to the rescue.

The youngest raccoons will spend a few weeks mostly indoors being bottle-fed by rehabbers until they’re vaccinated for diseases carried by cat colonies and dogs, and are ready to move to outdoor pens. Though the kits stay close to their adoptive human parents, they’re eventually allowed to roam free during the day on the rescue’s rural 20-acre property, a sprawling mix of meadows and thick forest spotted with ponds and a nearby river. Thanks to that setting, Woodside and Priest can take their troops on learning excursions, a luxury many wildlife rescues don’t have, Woodside said.

Among other activities, the kits practise fishing in shallow pools, and a live quail hunt provides hunting experience. For their final lesson, a volunteer other than Woodside or Priest traps the raccoons in cages, scaring them enough to encourage them to avoid traps and humans. The experience helps the young raccoons wean themselves from their human rescuers.

When a group of kits is ready for release, about six months after their rescue, Woodside and Priest host a graduation ceremony, reading a roll call of each graduating kit’s name.

“It’s like watching your children leave home,” Priest said.