Thai conservationists were delighted with the news that a sighting of an Asian golden cat had been recorded by camera traps.
The legendary “fire tiger” of Thai folklore and mythology, the Asian golden cat is one of the most scarcely seen of all wildcats.
Filmed by a camera trap in the country’s northern Khao Luang National Park, Catopuma temminckii, is most closely related to the bay cat of Borneo, or the marbled cat of the Himalayas.
Despite having branched away from its common lineage with the tiger between 8 and 16 million years ago, it’s known in Thai as the “fire tiger” because of its distinctive coat that can appear tan at times and orange at others. Interestingly, in Chinese it’s known not as the fire tiger, but the “metal cat.”
The sighting was announced by park officials in a July 7th Facebook post, in which the golden cat passed in front of the camera trap for a mere 10 seconds before disappearing into the forest.
Their behavior is perfectly adapted to both their forest home and to avoid being spotted by humans. Territorial, solitary, and capable of hunting in both day and night, the lack of predictable hunting patterns and social lives renders it one of the hardest cat species to see in the wild.
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The Karen people of southeastern Myanmar believe that carrying a single hair of the cat is sufficient to keep tigers away. Like the cheetah, it is listed as “Vulnerable” by the IUCN, and suffers from all the classic wildlife risks: habitat destruction and fragmentation, poaching, and conflict with humans over livestock.
A 2023 population estimate by the IUCN suggested that a reasonable number of mature individuals across its whole range could be 7,000—more than the cheetah, the tiger, and the snow leopard—and that it could number as many as 12,000 or as few as 1,000.
The wide variation is a testament to the cat’s elusiveness. Intact strongholds, according to the estimate, seem to be a mixture of Bhutan, western Myanmar/eastern Bangladesh, the west coast of Thailand, the hilly, forested center of the Malaysian Peninsula, and the south-facing flank of Sumatra.
WATCH the beautiful fire tiger on video below…
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