#small cats

[ID: an illustration of an ocelot facing to the left against a teal and blue background with monstera leaves and dark stones. The ocelot is gold with broken dark spots and orange rosettes. End.]

And wild cats just. Wild. (caracal lynx ocelot)

I’ll preface with this: all cats, from tigers to cougars to ocelots to house cats, share the same family of Felidae. From there, there is a split into two subfamilies, Pantherinae and Felinae. Those subfamilies then split into multiple genuses, Panthera and Neofelis under Pantherinae, and a bunch of other genuses under Felinae. Wild cats are everything under the Felidae family, excluding domestic cats.

so technically, big cats are only the species in the Panthera genus. The only living species in this genus are lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, and snow leopards. There were a bunch of other extinct species, like the cave lion, but presently there are only 5 true big cats.

NOT technically speaking, when you say big cat, most people will include cheetahs and cougars/pumas/mountain lions (all the same animal, just different names. Florida panthers are also cougars, but a subspecies of them) because they’re. In retrospect huge cats.

However, cheetahs snd cougars are part of the separate branch under the Felidae family, the subfamily Felinae. Under this subfamily, all species are technically considered small cats. Pumas are the biggest of the small cats, with cheetahs right behind them at second place. Other species that are more commonly associated with being small cats are ocelots, caracals, lynx, bobcats, black footed cats, and pallas’s cat.