Fun and Interesting Facts About Wild Cats

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest wild cat ever officially recorded was a male Bengal tiger (P. t. tigris) shot in northern Uttar Pradesh, India, in November 1967. It measured 3.22 m (10 ft 7 in) between pegs – or 3.37 m (11 ft 1 in) over the curves – and weighed approximately 389 kg (857 lb). The entry notes that this tiger had just consumed a buffalo the night before...The Amur tiger, also known as the Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), is generally acknowledged to be the largest living subspecies of tiger. Males can reach over 10.5 feet (3.3 meters) in length from head to tail and weigh up to 660 pounds (300 kilograms), while females are smaller at about 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) and 200-370 pounds (100-167 kilograms) (https://www.livescience.com/29822-tiger-subspecies-images.html)

Again, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the wild cat with the loudest roar is the lion (Panthera leo). The lion's roar can reach up to 114 dB at a distance of 1 meter. That's about the same as a automobile horn at one meter (https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/Training/PPETrain/dblevels.htm).

Despite anecdotes, speculation and claims, there is no peer-reviewed, scientific evidence that a tiger's roar can temporarily stun, paralyze or otherwise immobilize its prey.

The largest cat species that purrs is the cougar / puma / mountain lion (Puma concolor). The largest officially documented cougar is the verified specimen shot in 1901 near Meeker, Colorado, by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, weighing 105.2 kg (232 lb). (https://www.boone-crockett.org/bc-worlds-record-cougar).

The scientific literature on precise vertical jump measurements relative to body size in wild cats is limited, but the wild cat species with the greatest jumping ability relative to its body size is probably the Black-footed Cat (Felis nigripes). Its ratio of jump height per pound (5 feet / 4 lbs = 1.25 ft/lb) tops others like the domestic cat (0.64 ft/lb) and serval (0.58 ft/lb). https://a-z-animals.com/blog/how-high-and-far-can-cats-jump/.

The cat species with the highest documented hunting success rate is also the Black-footed Cat (Felis nigripes). Sliwa (1993/1994 observations) tracked a male and female black-footed cat for 622 hours; they made a kill every 50 minutes with 60% success, consuming 550 prey items (mostly small mammals/birds) over that period (Mammalian Species, 2015, Oxford University Press).

The most beautiful individual living feline is widely acknowledged to be Lelu, a female western white-footed cat (Felis bratus adorablis), who resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.