What is it?

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?

i-fd487ed162550da37a18fd81b6023f31-whatisit.jpg

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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...)

Bigfoot!

By Tegumai Bopsul… (not verified) on 17 Jul 2008 #permalink

^ The floodgates have been opened...

By Louis Bérubé (not verified) on 17 Jul 2008 #permalink

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.

I'm also suspecting fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), or possibly a European wildcat (Felis sylvestris ssp. sylvestris).

Ooops, misspelling...that's Felis silvestris silvestris ("of the forest", not "sylvestris", "of the chaser of Tweety Birds")!

Yes that's right, a tabby wombat.

By John Scanlon, FCD (not verified) on 17 Jul 2008 #permalink

I'm with the "small feline", Prionailurus seems like a good bet, but I'll say P. bengalensis just to cover the spread.

mistressofscience beat me to it, but it looks like a Tasmanian devil to me as well.

It's the creature from the Gable dogman footage. The sequence of images will end with a shot of the inside of the mouth...

Felis sylvestris sylvestris?