A forest cat trips a motion-activated "camera trap" in Madagascar's听Bez脿 Mahafaly Special Reserve. (Credit: Michelle Sauther).
In her 30 years working as a researcher in Madagascar, CU Boulder Anthropology Professor Michelle Sauther has had a number of chance encounters with a strange forest creature: a wild, oversized cat with a characteristic tabby-like coloring.听
鈥淲hen I first started working in Madagascar, I noticed that these cats all seemed to look the same,鈥� said Sauther, whose research focuses on primates. 鈥淭hey were big, and they were always the same color.鈥�
Scientists had no idea where they came from鈥攖he island nation has no native cats of its own.
Top: Michelle Sauther poses next to a ring-tailed lemur; middle: a group of ring-tailed lemurs; bottom: Researchers worry that forest cats could compete for food with the fossa, a native predator of Madagascar. (Credits: Michelle Sauther; by )
Now, in a , Sauther and her colleagues have drawn on genetic data from dozens of these wild cats to narrow in on an answer. According to their findings, the animals may not be newcomers to Madagascar at all. Instead, the cats seemed to have hitched a ride to the island on trade ships from as far away as Kuwait hundreds or even more than 1,000 years ago.
The results offer a first step toward better understanding the threat that these weird felines might pose to Madagascar鈥檚 native species. They include the fossa, a forest predator that looks feline but is more closely related to the mongoose.
The case of the forest cat also points to a global, and hairball-rich, phenomenon that Sauther calls the 鈥渃at diaspora.鈥�
鈥淐ats have essentially gone with us everywhere we鈥檝e gone,鈥� Sauther said. 鈥淲e can see that journey of humans and their pets going back pretty deep in time.鈥�
Tracking cats
That journey has brought pitfalls, too. Over the last century, hungry cats have run wild on islands around the world. They鈥檝e even hunted local birds, mammals and reptiles to extinction in places like Hawaii, the West Indies and New Zealand.听
What鈥檚 happening in Madagascar, however, is less clear.
In part, that鈥檚 because researchers don鈥檛 know much about the island鈥檚 forest cats. Many Malagasy are familiar with the beasts, which often sneak into their villages to eat their chickens. They call them 鈥渁mpaha,鈥� 鈥渇itoaty鈥� and 鈥渒ary鈥� among other names and distinguish them from the island鈥檚 pet cat population. 听
Still, Sauther said that she and other researchers have seen forest cats stalking lemurs, and that has her worried. She has a soft spot in her heart for these 鈥渦nderdogs鈥� of the primate world, and many lemur populations are already in deep trouble in Madagascar.听
鈥淭he real worry is: What are these cats doing?鈥� Sauther said. 鈥淎re they posing a threat to animals in Madagascar? Maybe they鈥檙e just part of the local ecology.鈥�
To find out, Sauther and her colleagues analyzed the DNA from 30 forest cats from sites in the north and south of Madagascar.
And, to their surprise, the cats seemed to have traveled to the island from far away鈥攔eally far away.
鈥淭hey were probably part of the maritime ships that came to Madagascar along these Arab routes,鈥� Sauther said.
Furry stowaways
The team鈥檚 DNA results identified the cats as belonging to Felis catus, the same domestic species that curls up on the laps of people worldwide. But the animals also seemed to have originated from the Arabian Sea region around modern-day Dubai, Oman and Kuwait. Sauther said that the cats may have ridden on merchant ships following trade routes that have existed for more than 1,000 years.
鈥淭hey would come down along the East Coast of Africa. They would stop at the islands of Lamu and Pate, and then it鈥檚 just barely a jump to go over to Madagascar,鈥� Sauther said.听
While the team can鈥檛 pinpoint exactly when the cats arrived on the island, Sauther thinks they may have been residents for a while鈥攁nd have possibly become a normal part of the local forests.听
鈥淭hat鈥檚 not to say they鈥檙e not a threat, but we need to understand their biology and their history to understand how we proceed in terms of conservation policy,鈥� Sauther said.
For now, she鈥檚 just happy to have the answer to a question that鈥檚 bugged her for several decades.听
鈥淭his study has answered a mystery that not just me but a lot of researchers in Madagascar have wondered about,鈥� Sauther said. 鈥淲e now know that these mysterious cats are domestic cats with a really interesting backstory.鈥�
Coauthors of the new study include researchers from Iowa State University, Duke University, University of Porto, University of Missouri, University of Bologna, Lajuma Research Centre, Denver Zoo and the University of Toliara.
