Cheetahs on the Edge

National Geographic (Roff Smith)

Anticipation ripples through the crowd. Fingers tighten around binoculars. Camera lenses snap into focus. No fewer than 11 canopied safari buses, bright with tourists and bristling with long lenses, huddle near a solitary acacia tree in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. For the past half hour a mother cheetah named Etta has been sitting in the shade with her four young cubs, eyeing a herd of Thomson’s gazelles that drifted into view on a nearby rise. Now she’s up and moving, sidling toward the herd with a studied nonchalance that fools no one, least of all the gazelles, which are staring nervously in her direction.

Rare Amur Leopard Couple Spotted in China

Beijing: A pair of endangered Amur leopards has been spotted in northeastern China, an indication that population of the extremely rare cat is recovering in the country.

In 2007, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) concluded that Amur leopards were extinct in China and only 19 to 26 survived in Russia.

It is the first time that field cameras caught two Amur leopards at the same time in northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, home to a quarter of all the rarest cats in the world.

New Photos of Ocelot in Arizona’s Huachuca Mountains

Arizona Game and Fish Department

New photography of an ocelot that has apparently persisted in the Huachuca Mountains since February 2011 was obtained Friday by the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

The new sighting was in the same general vicinity of the original sighting. Game and Fish analysis of the photography, taken by a sportsman whose dogs treed the ocelot, appears to confirm that it was the same animal. Photographs will be reviewed with other species experts to verify the Game and Fish conclusions.

Elusive Cat Caught on Camera in Himalayas for First Time

NBC

An elusive thick-furred feline has been caught on camera for the first time in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

A camera trap captured images of the fluffy Pallas’s cat, also known as the manul, in the country’s sprawling Wangchuck Centennial Park (WCP), which is also home to the snow leopard and Himalayan black bear. Pallas’s cats had never been documented in the region before, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Tigers ‘Take Night Shift’ to Dodge Humans

BBC

Tigers in Nepal seem to be taking night shifts in order to avoid their human neighbours, a study has shown.

Mountain Lion Makes Itself at Home in Griffith Park

Los Angeles Times (Martha Groves)

Smack in the middle of Los Angeles, feasting on deer and roaming the chaparral-covered slopes, a mountain lion prowls Griffith Park.

Yes, there had been sporadic rumors over the years of the 140-pound beasts lurking in the shadows of populated hillsides near the park’s attractions, but wildlife biologists had discounted them because of the improbability of the animals crossing the freeways to get there.

For the first time, however, scientists now have photographic evidence of a lion inhabiting the park. His name is P-22. That’s P, as in puma.