wildcat

(Newser) - For millennia, the Scottish wildcat prowled Great Britain, stalking prey and ignoring humans and its domesticated cousins alike. But as a study in Current Biology reports, that all changed in the 1950s and '60s, when disease killed off much of the rabbit population the wildcats depended on for food...

(Newser) - Staff members at a New Orleans zoo are grieving Saturday after a jaguar escaped its confines and killed six animals, the Times-Picayune reports. How the Audubon Zoo's 3-year-old jaguar got out at 7:20am is unclear, but it killed four alpaca, an emu, and a fox before being captured...

(Newser) - Scotland has launched a program to save the last of its rare Scottish wildcats, the BBC reports. Experts warn that fewer than 400 of the unique cats—endangered by persecution, habitat loss, and interbreeding with domestic cats—are believed to remain. Officials are seeking to raise awareness, encourage the neutering...

(Newser) - The origin of 600 million house cats has been traced to five matriarchal lines in the Mideast, where the first wildcats moved close to families some 10,000 years ago and earned their keep eating vermin,  the New York Times reports. House cats share striking DNA similarities with wildcats...