Brian Switek is an ecology & evolution student at Rutgers University.
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« Prehistoric Nom Club | Main | Photo of the Day #282: Fishing Cat »
Category: Photography
Posted on: July 17, 2008 5:46 PM, by Brian Switek
First, thanks to all of you who have been adding my posts to StumbleUpon.com. Over the past three days my traffic has been double, even triple, of what it normally is, and as far as I can tell much of it is coming from StumbleUpon. Thank you, and I hope some of you who are new to Laelaps like what you see and stick around.
Second, here's a little teaser of the creature that will appear in tomorrow's "Photo of the Day." Any guesses as to what it is?
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Comments
Well, first glance - particularly the white on the ears - suggests some sort of small cat, but that just seems too easy. Could it be a genet, perhaps? (Damned if I can remember if I've ever seen the back of a genet's head...)
Posted by: Shadow | July 17, 2008 6:15 PM
Bigfoot!
Posted by: Tegumai Bopsulai, FCD | July 17, 2008 6:39 PM
^ The floodgates have been opened...
Posted by: Louis Bérubé | July 17, 2008 6:58 PM
It's a trick question! What we're seeing is actually TWO creatures - a ropen battling a gorgonopsian over the carcass of a beaked whale.* =) (Oops is this Laelaps or Tetrapod Zoology?)
In all seriousness... Black-footed cat?
* To the uninitiated, every time Darren Naish posts a picture of an animal that asks us to guess its identity, we like to bring up animals that he has blogged about before, or the silly answers left by some commenters.
Posted by: Hai~Ren | July 17, 2008 7:26 PM
From the coat colour I would guess fishing cat, but the ears don't look right. Is it a hybrid of some sort?
Posted by: Mo Hassan | July 17, 2008 7:57 PM
Actually, after some careful thought and a bit of Googling, I think it's a fishing cat.
Posted by: Hai~Ren | July 17, 2008 8:22 PM
I think it's a tasmanian devil, and for some reason I think it may be pissed off.
Posted by: mistressofscience | July 17, 2008 8:25 PM
I'm also suspecting fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), or possibly a European wildcat (Felis sylvestris ssp. sylvestris).
Posted by: MMOToole | July 17, 2008 11:49 PM
Ooops, misspelling...that's Felis silvestris silvestris ("of the forest", not "sylvestris", "of the chaser of Tweety Birds")!
Posted by: MMOToole | July 17, 2008 11:54 PM
It does look like a cat, but I'll go with my first impression, a Wombat!
Posted by: Adrian Thysse, FCD | July 18, 2008 12:32 AM
Yes that's right, a tabby wombat.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | July 18, 2008 1:22 AM
I'm with the "small feline", Prionailurus seems like a good bet, but I'll say P. bengalensis just to cover the spread.
Posted by: neil | July 18, 2008 1:32 AM
mistressofscience beat me to it, but it looks like a Tasmanian devil to me as well.
Posted by: H.H. | July 18, 2008 2:16 AM
It's the creature from the Gable dogman footage. The sequence of images will end with a shot of the inside of the mouth...
Posted by: Darren Naish | July 18, 2008 6:35 AM
Felis sylvestris sylvestris?
Posted by: chris y | July 18, 2008 7:35 AM
I'm going to get away from the cat theme and go with grey fox.
Posted by: chrisD | July 18, 2008 8:47 AM
Though no one else has commented on the first paragraph, behold the power of social media. ;-)
Posted by: Nick Gardner | July 18, 2008 9:36 AM