European felids

[BorneanTiger]

(05-17-2019, 11:04 AM)Luipaard Wrote: There are Persian leopards roaming in Kazakhstan and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey. However; these are transcontinental countries who are partially located in both Europe and Asia. Armenia politically are considered a European country, although it's geographically located in West Asia.

From The Ustyurt Leopard now has a home and a name (link)

"Last October, for the first time on record in Kazakhstan, one of the world’s rarest species, the Persian leopard (or Caucasian leopard), was spotted and photographed on the territory of the Ustyurt Nature Reserve."

"On October 24, 2018 the experts reported that a trail camera had captured the leopard on the territory of the Ustyurt Nature Reserve. The leopard migrated to the Reserve’s lands from Turkmenistan."

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"This was the very first evidence of a live leopard (Panthera pardus ciscaucasica) on the territory of Kazakhstan. The previous cases registered in Kazakhstan, in Zhambyl region in 2000 and in Mangystau Region in 2015, unfortunately, resulted in the murder of the animals."

"In February 2019, a few days ago, new data from the trail cameras were received which, to the great joy of everyone involved, confirmed that the leopard still lived on the Reserve’s land and, according to the experts, “looked very well”."

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Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan remind me of another big cat that had been in the Caucasus: the Caspian tiger (formerly Panthera tigris virgata, but shown to be the same subspecies as the Siberian tiger, traditionally Panthera tigris altaica, but others would argue for it to be included in the subspecies Panthera tigris tigris: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y). According to Heptner and Sludskiy (https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...2/mode/2up), it is likely that the tiger didn't just inhabit or occur in Transcaucasia or South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia), but also in Ciscaucasia: 

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The tiger in this famous image from Berlin Zoo in 1999 was from the Caucasus: https://web.archive.org/web/200708240914...ger-13.htm 

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Also, they mention an 11th-century Eastern European account from the book Poucheniya Detyam by Vladimir II Monomakh, Grand Prince of Kievan Rus', a state that is regarded as a cultural ancestor of the Ukraine, Belurus and Russia (not the 'Rus' in the latter 2 names). Map of Kievan Rus': https://02varvara.wordpress.com/2010/02/...h-century/ 

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In this account, Monomakh, while he ruled Turov (in modern-day Belarus), and Chernigrov (in modern-day Ukraine), he was on a hunt when he was attacked by a lyuti zver (лютый зверь, Old Russian for "fierce animal"). The zver sprang towards his thighs, and hurt him and his horse. Traditionally, the zver was considered to be a wolf or lynx, but according to Heptner and Sludskii, neither would spring at a rider or injure a horse, so it was more likely to be a big cat, with some people thinking that it could have been a leopard, or that it was more likely to be a tiger than a lion. The occurrence of the lion at the southern Russian Steppes, or the area of the mouth of the Don River, is disputed by Heptner and Sludskiy, whereas according to them, tigers likely occurred in the Russian Steppes or at the estuary of the Don River: https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...lyuti+zver 

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The manner of this attack reminds me of this famous video from India: 

Also, this statue of a tiger attacking a man is in the area of Mount Akhun near Sochi, which as I mentioned above is in North Caucasus: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:...untain.JPG

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