Berlin Wildlife Park has announced the birth of its first rusty-spotted cat kittens since it opened 168 years ago. Nicknamed ‘the hummingbirds of the cat family’, rusty spotted cats (Prionailurus rubiginosus) rival the black-footed cats (Felis nigripes) of southern Africa for the title of world’s smallest wild cat. Their long bodies and tails, which can reach a total of 78 cm in the largest males, might out-stretch their African relatives, but they’re just a little bit lighter at 0.9 – 1.6 kg. To put this in perspective, the world record for the smallest adult tabby cat is 1.36 kg. And my giant beast of a tuxedo cat is 4 kg. Which, by the way, is the average weight for a domestic cat (I’m not a terrible mum).
Berlin Wildlife Park’s two new kittens were born on August 5, would have weighed somewhere between 60 – 77 g. They’re not an easy species to breed – compared to the domestic cat’s estrous cycle (when the cats are ‘on heat’ and ready to mate) of 14 to 21 days during breeding season in spring, the rusty-spotted cat’s estrous lasts just five days. And she’ll only ever have one or two kittens in a litter, born after a gestation period of around 67 days.
Unlike another very rare andsmall wildcat species, the Scottish wildcat, rusty-spotted cats are easy to tame, and there have been some reports of this species being bred with domestic cats. Nineteenth century British physician and zoologist Thomas C. Jerdon kept a number of rusty-spotted cats in his home for research, and according to Wild Cats of the World by Swiss naturalist and writer Charles Albert Walter Guggisberg, he said of them, “I had a kitten brought to me when very young in 1846, and it became quite tame, and was the delight and admiration of all who saw it. Its activity was quite marvellous and it was very playful and elegant in its motions.”
In his 1884 book, Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon, British naturalist Robert Armitage Sterndale described his experience with some rusty-spotted cats,
