Tibetan Golden Cat (Catopuma temminckii tristis) at Edinburgh Zoo - July 6t

This male cat recently arrived from Rotterdam, and will hopefully form a breeding pair with the Edinburgh female in time.

In terms of pure fact, I know for sure that the recently deceased "Bruno" was a pure ssp of Golden Cat, but not the same one - C. t. tristis - as the female "Swai-fai" or her sibling "Ipoh" also at Edinburgh. Unfortunately the keeper I spoke to didn't know which one he was.

However, I have very strong suspicions that he was a Chinese Golden Cat - C. t. dominicanorum - like the individual at Thrigby Hall. This is my belief for two reasons:

Firstly, when I consider photographs of all three Asiatic Golden Cat subspecies, the Chinese ssp looks a lot more robust when compared to either the Indochinese or Tibetan ssp. This is a feature which Bruno very much shared with the Thrigby cat, and which made him very distinctive in comparison with the two other cats at Edinburgh.

Secondly, I have attempted to trace the line of origin of both Bruno and the Thrigby cat. According to the official Edinburgh website, which has not been updated for some time in this regard,

When I look at the ZTL listing for the Thrigby cat, it says that this individual arrived from Rotterdam in 2006. When looking at the prior holding listing on ZTL for this individual at Rotterdam, it states he came to them from Wassenaar Wildlife Breeding Centre in 2003.

Circumstantial, and as Wassenaar was a private breeding centre which is now closed, probably impossible to prove for sure - but with the morphological observations, it's as close as we can get.

Interesting - the most up-to-date information I have heard was the 2006 announcement in the EAZA summer newsletter which read:

So it sounds like it may just be Aldabra tortoises onsite at this point, as 6 years on the continued survival of the white-whiskered spider monkeys is less likely.