He hasn't got a very truncated tail, you can't see hers. The New Forest Wildlife Park have quite a lot of these- although their striping/colour is uniform their tail tips vary a great deal, one or two really blunt, others more pointed.
IMHO, this is another animal where taxonomists and zoos could talk to each other. According to the IUCN, only five subspecies of Felis silvestris should be recognised. These are:- European wildcat F.s.silvestris (Schreber, 1775) — was formerly very widely distributed in Europe and absent only from Fennoscandia; African wildcat F.s.lybica (Forster, 1780) — occurs across northern Africa, and extends around the periphery of the Arabian Peninsula to the Caspian Sea; Southern African wildcat F.s.cafra (Desmarest, 1822) — occurs in Southern Africa; Asiatic wildcat F.s.ornata (Gray, 1830) — occurs from the eastern Caspian into western India, and north to Kazakhstan, and into western China and southern Mongolia; Chinese Alpine Steppe cat F.s.bieti (Milne-Edwards, 1872) — occurs in western China, and is primarily found in Qinghai province, and possibly also northwestern Sichuan province. (ie the Chinese desert/mountain cat is NOT a distinct subspecies). If this is true, then maintaining "Scottish" Wildcats, as distinct from European, is just taking up space from other small felids that may well need captive breeding more.
It is interesting to note, though, that volume 1 of the “Handbook of the Mammals of the World” (2009) lists nineteen subspecies of Felis silvestris and recognises F.s.grampia as one of these subspecies. The same volume regards the Chinese desert cat Felis bieti as a distinct species.
Great photo! Considering the scottish population is unequivocally separated from the european population by a stretch of ocean, it seems to me to make perfect sense to treat them as a distinct population. I am also not sure there are other small cats (available for captive breeding) that would be more valuable in the cage space. And I assume by the name British Wildlife Centre that they only deal with native species anyway?
The IUCN is also one of the most conservative groups when it comes to taxonomy. It may take years or even decades for them to recognize taxonomic changes.
The British Wildlife Centre only exhibits animals living wild in the UK; they are not all native species, though, as some introduced animals (e.g. muntjac, grey squirrel, American mink) are also in the collection.
I don't know if specimens of Felis silvestris from further south in Britain are known to exist elsewhere in UK museums; it would be interesting to know if they are different from those in the Scottish Highlands. Certainly, I know that Andrew Kitchener has expressed doubt about the distinctiveness of grampia. Historically, they were found all over Great Britain (although apparently not Ireland). I don't know if Red Fox, Eurasian Otter or Eurasian Badger (our other remaining medium sized carnivores) are deemed to be taxonomically separable in the UK. I don't dispute that persecution, habitat loss and hybridisation are threatening something very special in Northern Scotland; my query is whether or not holders of "Scottish" wildcats can, or can't, usefully work alongside holders of "European" animals.
Are we talking about the same thing? We (or at least I) are NOT saying scottish are distinct from british wildcats that once roamed the entire island. We are saying they are distinct from those on the european mainland.
Sorry for any confusion. I am querying whether grampia is different from those in continental Europe, pointing out the fact that its present isolation in Northern Scotland is a man-made situation. Having done, no doubt partial, checks on the Web, Red Fox, Eurasian Otter and Eurasian Badger populations in Great Britain are deemed to be taxonomically representative of the forms found on the other side of the Channel. So working on first principles it seems mildly anomalous that the Eurasian Wildcat should be different. The important issue, at any rate, is to preserve the purity of the species, which is being hammered through hybridisation.
Has there been any combined genetic and taxonomic argumentative research for the assertion that UK red fox, otter and badger are identical to European mainland populations? I would - conservatively - treat any population separated by bio-geographical borders as a distinctive ecological conservation unit untill without any doubt proven otherwise.
