A catalog of vocalizations of female and juvenile Far Eastern wildcats for the acoustic monitoring of wild populations

Photo: Araliya, a female Far Eastern wildcat, carries her kitten.

The War Eastern wildcat (Amur wildcat, Prionailurus bengalensis euptilurus) is a rare northern subspecies of the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), a species widely distributed from India to Japan. Two of the rarest subspecies inhabit the forested Japanese islands of Iriomote and Tsushima, with each island population numbering no more than 100 individuals. Passive acoustic monitoring - which involves automated sound recording without human presence - can be successfully employed to locate and survey these elusive forest felids. However, identifying the calls of a specific species or subspecies within the recordings requires a reference sound catalog, which can only be compiled by studying the animals' vocal behavior in captivity. To date, the vocalizations of leopard cats have not been described.

Spectrograms of the meowing (left) of an Amur wildcat kitten and the chattering (right) of a female.

Scientists from the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IEE RAS), Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Germany) have conducted the first study on the vocalizations of a female Far Eastern wildcat and her five kittens, housed at the IEE RAS "Chernogolovka" research facility. Spectrographic analysis revealed that the structure of the rhythmic "chattering" sounds used by the female to call her kittens differs from any known vocalizations of domestic cats. This makes it possible to document the presence of wild forest cats based on field recordings and distinguish them from the calls of stray domestic cats. In contrast, the vocalizations of the Far Eastern wildcat kittens resembled standard meows and were difficult to distinguish from those of domestic kittens; consequently, they could not serve as reliable indicators for passive acoustic monitoring in the wild. A surprising discovery was the similarity between the kitten-calling "chattering" sounds of female Far Eastern wildcats and those of female cheetahs. However, since the range of cheetahs is limited to Africa, there is no risk of confusing the chattering of a Far Eastern wildcat for it during passive acoustic monitoring in the wild.