Clouded Leopard

A newly discovered species of big cat, the Sundaland clouded leopard, has been caught on film for the first time by scientists in the Dermakot Forest Reserve in Malaysia. “The Sundaland clouded leopard, only discovered to be a distinct species three years ago, is one of the least known and elusive of all cat species. Two more rare cats, the flat-headed cat and bay cat, were also photographed. Details of the discoveries are published in the latest issue of Cat News, the newsletter of the Cat Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). ‘Clouded leopards are one of the most elusive cats. They are very hardly ever encountered and almost no detailed study about their ecology has been conducted,’ says Mr Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany. Mr Wilting is leader of a project that evaluates how changes to the forest in the Malaysian part of Borneo impact carnivores living there. As part of that project, the team places a network of camera traps in the forest, that automatically photograph passing animals.”