Pallas's Cat

About the Pallas's cat

Pallas's cat, also called the manul, is a small wild cat with long, dense, light grey fur and rounded ears set low on the sides of its head. It was first described in 1776 by the naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, who encountered it near Lake Baikal, and its common name honors him — coined later by William Thomas Blanford. The Cat Classification Task Force currently recognizes two subspecies: Otocolobus manul manul across the western and northern parts of Central Asia from Iran to Mongolia, and O. m. nigripectus in the Himalayas from Kashmir to Bhutan. Genetically, Pallas's cat diverged from a common ancestor it shares with the genus Prionailurus somewhere between 8.55 and 4.8 million years ago.

The cat's coat runs light grey with pale yellowish-ochre or reddish hues, some hair tips white and some blackish, and grows greyer and denser with fewer visible markings in winter than in summer. Two black zigzag lines run from the corners of the eyes to the jaw on each cheek, while the chin, whiskers, and lips are white, and the lower back carries five to seven narrow black transverse stripes. The tail is grey with seven narrow black rings and a black tip. The fur itself is exceptionally dense — up to 9,000 hairs per cm² (58,000 per sq in) — which, combined with a stocky build, makes the cat look considerably bulkier than it actually is. Its rounded ears sit low on the sides of the head, letting it peer over an obstacle while exposing very little of its face, an arrangement that can give it a look of unease or ferocity. The eyes are yellow-irised and ringed in white, with round pupils that contract to small circular discs in bright light, a trait shared among felines only with the puma, jaguarundi, and cheetah.

About the size of a domestic cat, Pallas's cat measures 46 to 65 cm (18–26 in) head-to-body with a 21 to 31 cm (8.3–12.2 in) tail, and weighs 2.5 to 4.5 kg (5 lb 8 oz to 9 lb 15 oz). Its skull is rounded with a short nasal bone and large, forward-facing orbits, its legs are short, and its claws are short, sharp, and retractile — all features suited to a life spent stalking prey among rocks rather than running it down in the open.

Behavior and diet

Pallas's cat is solitary and relies on caves, rock crevices, and marmot burrows for shelter. A radio-collar study of 29 individuals in central Mongolia between 2005 and 2007 tracked the cats using 101 different dens — 39 for winter, 42 for summer, and 20 for raising kittens — each typically with a single entrance 15.6 to 23.4 cm (6.1–9.2 in) across. Cats stayed in summer dens for 2 to 21 days and winter dens for 2 to 28 days; summer and maternal dens tended to sit near rocky habitat with little direct sun, while winter dens sat closer to ravines. Female home ranges in that study varied from 7.4 to 125.2 km² (2.9–48.3 sq mi), while male ranges ran larger, from 20.9 to 207.0 km² (8.1–79.9 sq mi), overlapping the ranges of one to four females as well as other males; ranges shrank for both sexes in winter. Activity patterns shift with the seasons and with human presence — cats in one unprotected part of central Mongolia were mainly crepuscular from May through August but active by day from September to November, while cats studied in the western Mongolian Altai were active by day but less so where livestock was present. Of nine kittens observed in captivity, only the two males scent-marked by spraying urine.

Pallas's cat is a highly specialized predator of small mammals, catching them by stalking or ambush, with lagomorphs and rodents making up the core of its diet. Its habitat sets the terms for hunting: rocky outcrops, scree slopes, and ravines that provide cover for stalking prey.

The female gives birth to two to six kittens in spring after a gestation of 66 to 75 days. Kittens start hunting at about five months old and reach adult size by six to seven months.

Range and habitat

Pallas's cat's range extends from the Caucasus east through Central Asia to Mongolia and adjacent parts of Dzungaria and the Tibetan Plateau, with recorded populations spanning the Iranian Plateau, the Hindu Kush, parts of the Himalayas from Kashmir to Bhutan, the Altai-Sayan region, and the South Siberian Mountains. Sightings are widely scattered rather than continuous — individual cats have turned up as high as 5,593 m (18,350 ft) in Nepal's Shey-Phoksundo National Park, the highest record for the species, and as far as Arunachal Pradesh in India's northeast.

The cat favors rocky montane grasslands and shrublands, rocky outcrops, scree slopes, and ravines, generally avoiding areas where continuous snow cover exceeds 15 to 20 cm (6–8 in). Conditions across its range are harsh and dry: the southwestern parts see cold, dry winters and moderate to low summer rainfall over sagebrush and grass vegetation, while the central part spans hilly terrain, high plateaus, and valleys covered in dry steppe or semi-desert vegetation, with a continental climate that can swing 80°C (140°F) between the year's highest and lowest temperatures and drop to −50°C (−58°F) in winter.

Conservation status

Pallas's cat has been listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List since 2020, because of its widespread range and assumed large global population. It is on CITES Appendix II, and hunting it is banned in every range country except Mongolia. National ratings are tougher: it is Near Threatened on Mongolia's Red List and Endangered in China.

It was once hunted heavily for fur, with more than 10,000 skins a year taken in China, Mongolia and Russia. International trade has stopped since 1988, but domestic trade in skins and body parts for medicine continues in Mongolia. Other threats include poaching, herding dogs, traps set for small mammals, and rodent poisoning that wipes out its prey: between 2005 and 2009, 54,147 km² of grassland on the Tibetan Plateau was poisoned, destroying an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 tonnes of pikas. Mining and infrastructure projects fragment its habitat.

The species has been kept in zoos since the early 1950s, and as of 2018, 60 zoos across Europe, Russia, North America and Japan took part in coordinated breeding programs.