The Big Cats Conservatory
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Someone once said that the domestic cat is merely a miniature tiger. This may be true since no true cat fancier can resist the lure of the big cat.
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There are some 36 species of the wild cat family spread across most of the continents excluding Antarctica and Australia.
Since tigers hunt mostly at dusk and dawn their stripes help them hide in the shadows of tall grasses. They stalk and pounce because they are not able to chase prey a long distance. Tigers may drag their prey to water to eat. They are commonly seen in the shade or wading in pools to cool off. A tiger can consume as much as 88 lbs of meat in one feeding.
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Lions are the only true social cat species: they prefer the company of their prides. Lionesses often come into season and give birth around the same time which enables them to share maternal duties. A lion's roar can be heard for a radius of miles and is used to either ward off intruders or gather the pride together.
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"Cheetah" comes from a Hindi word meaning "spotted one". The adult fur is yellow or tan with solid black spots over nearly the entire body. The throat is white and the end of the tail is ringed in black and tipped with white. The head is small with eyes set high and a black "tear mark" running from the inner aspect of each eye down to the mouth. The teeth are small and, unlike most cats, there is no gap between the canines and premolars. An adult cheetah weighs 110-130 pounds, is about 32 inches tall at the shoulder and 56 inches long with another 30-32 inches of tail.
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There is really no such animal as a "black panther". Some leopards are melanistic leopards, which means leopards with black fur. These leopards are born in the same litter as normally marked cats and also carry the leopard's rosette markings, although these are masked by the darkness of the fur.
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There are also melanistic, or black jaguars which are also commonly but mistakenly called "black panthers." In this melanistic form cheetahs and jaguars are more difficult to separate, however the jaguars large head and stocky forelimbs are often a good way to differentiate between the two cats.
