Recently, the corpse of a leopard cat was found at the Yangmeikeng field observation station in Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province. The leopard cat is 34.2 cm long, 22.1 cm high, and weighs about 1 kg. It should be a sub-adult leopard cat . According to the surveillance video, this little Ocelot was killed by another big Ocelot. The little Ocelot had multiple wounds on his body. I don't know why. The two sides fought so hard.
In view of the death of the leopard cat, the monitoring station plans to make a specimen of the leopard cat for permanent preservation. Infrared cameras are installed nearby to conduct further investigations on the number, population, and range of activities of the surrounding leopard cats. So what is an ocelot? What should we do if we encounter it? Can this leopard cat be raised? I still want to raise one walnut.
What is a leopard cat
Leopard cat also known as raccoon, stone tiger , it is a small cat from Asia, it looks like a copper spotted animal in China. So it is also called the money cat. Leopard cats are not big, similar to domestic cats, but because they live in the wild, they are more slender and have longer legs. They generally live in mountain forest areas, countryside shrubs and forest edge villages, and make nests in trees, earth caves, under rocks or in stone crevices.
Leopard cats have strong climbing ability, can move freely on trees, can also swim, and often move and forage near water such as ponds, streams, and rice fields. They Mainly eat rodents, squirrels, flying squirrel, rabbits, frogs, lizards, snakes, small birds, insects, etc. Of course, sometimes if they cannot find enough food, they will sneak into the village to steal food. Chickens, ducks and other poultry, for example, this time they came to steal the chickens.
Northern leopard cats are generally bred in spring and summer.In general, estrus mating during the Spring Festival, the gestation period is 60-70 days, and the litters are born from May to June. There is 1 litter per year, 2-4 litters per litter, and 2 litters are the majority. Be pregnant again within 5 months, so the reproductive ability is not bad but not very good.
How did the leopard cat become a protected animal
The leopard cat was once widely distributed throughout China, and the number is huge, and it is not a protected animal. It is estimated that there are no less than 1 million leopard cats in the country. However, people have no mercy for this kind of cat. In the 1960s and 1970s, ocelot skins were the main export animal skins of our country. It is conservatively estimated that 250,000 ocelots were killed in human shotguns every year. Down, and then was peeled and eaten meat.
This kind of massacre continued until the 1990s, when the number of leopard cats was relatively scarce. If it weren't for the strong reproductive ability and adaptability, it is estimated that the leopard cat would have been extinct. The number of wild leopard cats has decreased, but in order to meet the needs of export trade, people have begun to raise leopard cats in captivity, but there are still many people who go to catch wild leopard cats.
changed from three to second
The leopard cat was originally only three protected animals , but it has recently been upgraded to a national second-class protected animal. Don’t underestimate this upgrade. The difference is big. It's about whether you are fined or imprisoned after killing it or hurting it. Three protected animals refer to terrestrial wild animals with important ecological, scientific, and social value protected by the state, and are non-key protected wild animals by the state.
The first and second levels are national key protected wild animals. Don’t underestimate these two important words. Hunting and killing "three-being" animals constitutes an illegal hunting crime only when the circumstances are “serious”. Upgrading to Level 2 is different.
According to Article 341 of the Criminal Law,Illegal hunting, trading, and transportation of precious and endangered wild animals, regardless of whether it is level one or two, even if you just kill or sell one, you will be fined in jail. It is a crime, so this is a crime. A leap in status. This makes people even more avoiding rats, after all, they can't hurt them, and they always go to the farmers' houses to eat chickens, which is quite helpless.
Leopard cat entering the house incident
In 2019, a leopard cat in Yulin Township, Wuxi County was caught while stealing a chicken. Then the staff in the township immediately went to find out the situation, the villagers After Xue learned that it was a state-protected animal, he took the initiative to hand the leopard cat to the police for release.
Others just lost a few chickens, but Cao, a farmer in Changshu, Jiangsu, lost more than 1,000 chickens. According to him, in 17 years, he caught the first ocelot that ate chickens, and then released it, but soon he caught three ocelots and sent them to the local forestry department.
But I don’t know why, these leopard cats seem to be here. According to Cao, in just three months, 1,500 chickens on his farm were eaten by ocelots, and in the past two years, he found no fewer than 50 ocelots. Because the ocelot is a protected animal and cannot be killed at will, he asked the forestry department for help and compensation.
But the staff said that it is impossible to have so many leopard cats. Normally, within a certain range, there should be only a few ocelots, there can be so many, and there is no evidence that the ocelots did it, so they can do nothing. So Cao could only install nearly 80 surveillance probes around the farm, hoping to record evidence of the ocelot's killing.
Can an ocelot be kept?
Ocelot is a national second-class protected animal, so it cannot be kept. However, some netizens said that they had seen people selling leopard cats on the Internet.In fact, it is indeed leopard cat, but Bengal leopard cat , the two are not the same. Bengal leopard cats are generally considered to be the heterogeneous offspring of domestic cats and leopard cats, and it must be four generations later that only 1/8 of the leopard pedigree remains on the cat in order to be regarded as a real Bengal leopard cat.
So most of the leopard cats mentioned on the Internet are such pet cats. Real leopard cats cannot be raised, and it is illegal to raise them. Not only can we not raise them, we can't harm them without threatening personal safety, otherwise we will just wait for the state to provide you with food and shelter.
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