For about 30 years now, a flat-headed cat in Thailand has been the ultimate Schrödinger’s cat: it simultaneously existed and did not exist. Its habitat had been largely wiped out, and along with it, its population numbers and any shred of proof that it had ever existed at all anymore. It was so rarely seen that it was classified as an endangered species back in 2008.
It is elusive no more, now that camera traps and protected wetlands captured 29 sightings of the elusive flat-headed cat, marking the first confirmed evidence of the species in Thailand since 1995.
With an estimated global population of somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 adults, the flat-headed cat is one of the world’s most endangered wildcats.
It’s around the size of the average house cat, but with bigger, rounded eyes and a penchant for dining on anything in and around water, like fish, frogs, and shrimp. It lives almost exclusively in Southeast Asia’s wetlands among the peat swamps and freshwater mangroves that are rapidly disappearing under agricultural expansion and land conversion.
The rediscovery came from an ecological survey launched last year by the wild cat conservation group Panthera and Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation. Camera traps placed in Princess Sirindhorn Wildlife Sanctuary documented the adorable little wild feline returning to the same area again and again, suggesting a relatively local concentration.
Maybe the most important discovery amongst the footage was a female flat-headed cat alongside her cub, a rare sighting for a species that gives birth to just one offspring and struggles to reproduce.
Since flat-headed cats lack distinctive markings, scientists still can’t determine how many individuals were actually recorded. Rediscovering the species is itself a huge discovery. Whether it will survive long-term, what with the decimation of its home, is up to us humans, as we try to figure out how to protect wildlife while expanding human development, and whether or not the two can even co-exist.
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