Live
- BRS an obstacle for investments: Jagga Reddy
- TGPSC all set for holding Group-III exams
- Delays dog LRS cases as applications pile-up
- TGSPDCL deploys 101 ERT vehicles
- JIH to host national conclave in city
- OU celebrates National Library Week with book exhibition
- Prakash Utsav to be celebrated today
- Survey staff turn a blind eye towards apartment dwellers
- Assembly to resolve on Constitutional amendment on age limit for legislators
- Govt to hold three public meetings for ‘People’s Govt—Victory Celebrations’
Big cats face same threats as extinct Ice Age ancestors
Big cat species, especially African lion and Sunda clouded leopard, face the same challenges as their ancestors that went extinct towards the end of the last Ice Age, a new study says.
London: Big cat species, especially African lion and Sunda clouded leopard, face the same challenges as their ancestors that went extinct towards the end of the last Ice Age, a new study says.
The team researched the cause of extinction of seven large cats from the Ice Age including four different types of sabre-toothed cats.
The seven big cats that went extinct during that period are those which lost the greatest proportion of their prey, showed the study published in the journal Ecography.
Using a new global database of felid diets called FelidDiet, the researchers assessed whether Ice Age extinction trends could be applied to populations of big cat species now.
They discovered that if all the currently threatened and declining prey species within big cat natural ranges were to go extinct, only 39 percent of the African lion's prey and 37 percent of Sunda clouded leopard's would remain.
The researchers believe that if this prey loss trend continued, this would pose a high risk of extinction to these two big cat species in particular.
