To be honest I wasn't aware of any graduated scale of bigness for categorising cats. I take it then that lions and tigers are big cats, and panthers, cougars, leopards and mountain lions are just medium sized cats. Our tabby, Max could be described as a big cat, ligers are effing enormous. Stonyground.
Ant member of the genus Panthera is a big cat ( lion, tiger leopard, jaguar), the condition of their hyoid bone means they can roar, but not purr, unlike the so called small cats, which can purr but never roar.Ligers are huge because the crossbreeding that produces them switches off the gene that limits growth.
I always thought that anything bigger than a Eurasian Lynx was classified as a "big cat". Or put another way, if you see one in the flesh and feel the need for a .357 in your hand, it's a big cat.
To be honest I wasn't aware of any graduated scale of bigness for categorising cats. I take it then that lions and tigers are big cats, and panthers, cougars, leopards and mountain lions are just medium sized cats. Our tabby, Max could be described as a big cat, ligers are effing enormous.
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Ant member of the genus Panthera is a big cat ( lion, tiger leopard, jaguar), the condition of their hyoid bone means they can roar, but not purr, unlike the so called small cats, which can purr but never roar.Ligers are huge because the crossbreeding that produces them switches off the gene that limits growth.
DeleteI had another form of cougar in mind……….
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DeleteI always thought that anything bigger than a Eurasian Lynx was classified as a "big cat". Or put another way, if you see one in the flesh and feel the need for a .357 in your hand, it's a big cat.
ReplyDeleteThat’s way bigger than you’d need to down a lynx!
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