Feline Relatives and Ancestors
The news report
Not everyone likes cats – although it is sometimes hard to imagine – given the amount of Cat photos and videos posted on social media outlets like Facebook and Youtube.
I obviously like cats – I have a numbers and often refer to them in my postcards. At the moment I have four, (we have found homes for most of that have found their way into the office, and some have decided to wander off for some reason and to fend for themselves), and visitors to the office are often surprised to see them.
As a result, stories on the web about cats often attract my attention and, as it happens, in the recent past cat shows in Bishkek have been included special Photo features in a variety of newspapers around the globe … usually for some of the more outlandish pictures.
Last month, here in Bishkek, we hosted the Global Snow Leopard Conservation Forum.
Representatives of twelve different countries attended, as well as several international organizations such as the World Bank.
It had been hoped to attract a number of famous names to attend, but in the end only a few actually made it, including the presenter of a Russian wildlife TV programme.
On the other hand, the President, Almazbek Atambaev, attended and stressed the importance of the project … noting that although conservation of the snow leopard may seem a minor issue against the large-scale problems the mankind faces today, “… the experience of history teaches there are no minor issues in the relationship with the nature.”
The delegates adopted a Declaration, (to be known as the Bishkek Declaration), and decided to set up a fund for implementing it – the executive secretariat to be hosted in Bishkek.
On a practical level, the German based Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union, (NABU), announced at the forum that they a launching a new project in the Tien Shan … creating a specially protected area in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan aimed at the protection of endangered species such as the Snow Leopard, but also the The Tien Shan Brown Bear and the Argarli, (Marco Polo Sheep).
As part of the project it is hoped to promote ecologic tourism by establishing hiking trails; opening guest houses; creating tourist packages, as well as giving recommendations for the development of tourism in protected areas.
It was also decided to establish 23rd October as the Day of the Snow Leopard, and Kyrgyzstan announced that 2015 would be the Year of the Snow Leopard.
In fact, it now appears that the Snow Leopard might be important for our understanding of the evolution of the world’s “big cats” – the lion, tiger, jaguar, leopard, and snow leopard … all members of the Panthera genus, (as opposed to the more common Felidae … such as our common house cat).
There was an interesting news report on the on the BBC News website: Oldest big cat fossil found in Tibet, (based on a report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society – the full text of the article is available free of charge on line as well as an interesting youtube clip), apparently a group of paleontologists have discovered skull fragments which are thought to be between four and almost six million years old in the Himalayas … which is said to be “similar to a snow leopard”.
This is interesting for a number of reasons …
- The scientists were surprised to come across a the fossilized remains of a cat … in this area of Tibet other animals predominate: antelope, badgers weasels and foxes … and also, interestingly, rhinos … and then several examples of this new species.
- Analysis of the fragments show that they are from a previously unknown species, (which has been dubbed Panthera blytheae), which is now extinct but appears to have a territory which seems overlap that of several of the species that we know today … such as that of the snow leopard.
- Also, it supports the theory that the world’s big cats of today probably originated here in Central Asia, migrating over time to cover the globe. It appears that, although scientists had postulated that this was the case, until now the earliest fossil evidence of big cats comes from Africa … which caused a bit of a problem.
Bishkek