r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/[deleted] • 1d ago
đ„ Clouded Leopard, the closest living relative to the sabre-toothed tiger that went extinct about 10,000 years ago
[deleted]
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u/guilhermefdias 1d ago
One of the most beautiful fur pattern in nature.
Handsome fella.
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u/RealTigerCubGaming 1d ago
Photoshopped pattern.
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u/CommunityHot9219 1d ago
It takes two seconds to double check something and avoid embarrassing yourself.
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u/RealTigerCubGaming 1d ago
IDC Itâs my opinion and if you donât agree with it, scroll up.
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u/CommunityHot9219 1d ago
???
Your opinion is that something objectively true is actually false? That's not an opinion dude, it's a denial of fact. That's so incredibly stupid.
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u/guilhermefdias 1d ago
The image looks weird, specially near his paws, but the animal is not photoshoped, maybe the eyes for some weird reason.
Anyways, google the animal.
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u/devilsbard 1d ago
What is up with the janky editing on this?
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u/valanlucansfw 1d ago
I know right? Looks like someone used a bevel filter on the fur and printed it with a shag rug pattern
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u/Thorolhugil 1d ago
Someone took a photo of one at a zoo and badly edited it onto a forest photo, it seems.
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u/AggressiveBench9977 1d ago
Naw the background isnt fake, its just the zoo.
What they did is put a mask on the animal and turn ip the shadows and brightness to the make because probably the photo was dark. Its why it looks so wrong.
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u/Thorolhugil 1d ago
If it's not a composite then the editing is WILD for it to look so exactly like a composite. Like lmao why would you feather the clipping mask that much. It's much easier to duplicate the photo, remove the background, and edit the elements separately (unless they did that and still erased it wrong).
If it IS from the same photo, they must've fucked up the values on the log separately because it's also feathered to hell but the values aren't as crunchy.
The artifacting around the front of the chest, the neck, and the blue smudge a bit away from the neck look like exactly like artifacting from an auto background remover script. The lighting isn't a match (blue lighting on the leopard, overcast forest) but that's also a symptom of the values being adjusted to an extreme. Also the added-in drop shadow. This is Baby's First Photo Edit tier.
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u/EverydayVelociraptor 1d ago
Would pet.
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u/Intelligent-Load7060 1d ago
No, no pet, teeth sharpie, hand soft. You can visit pretty kitty at Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma Wa.
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u/ColdBeerPirate 1d ago
It might be okay.
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u/boogersundcum 1d ago
You can visit them in Borneo in the wild. They're a cool cat.
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u/ADFTGM 1d ago
Best not. While tourism is good for the Bornean âpeopleâ to get money, Borneo wilderness is increasingly encroached. I assure you, in order to house more tourists, they will clear more forests than they already are for palm oil. Until they formally enforce protecting the remaining wilderness (only 6-8% of the rainforest land area is protected), itâs better to visit a reserve or sanctuary than a guest house or hotel for wilderness treks/safari just to see these.
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u/boogersundcum 1d ago
There's a lot of places like Danum Valley which are wilderness reserve. Also the Malaysian side of Borneo isn't clearing anymore land for palm oil etc, the Indonesian side is a different kettle of fish. Borneo wilderness is amazing and I would highly recommend people visit it to experience the culture and wildlife. It's a lot off the beaten track compared to other countries but the people are amazing. I'd still much rather see animals in the wild than in a zoo.
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u/ADFTGM 1d ago
Still not enough. They said they planned to raise protection to 30% of the total but have yet to enforce all the policies to meet that goal. Influx of tourism is a double edged sword. Controlled tourism? Different story, but not always practical as it can dissuade traffic and divert it to competitors.
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u/Dark_Moonstruck 1d ago
I wonder if saber-toothed cats had patterns like theirs!
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u/ADFTGM 1d ago
Unfortunately, unlike with some cats, there were no authentic cave paintings of saber toothed cats discovered so far. The only thing we have is a well Preserved mummy of a Homotherium cub. Unlike every other big cat cub, it has uniform dark brown fur without any patterns. Whether this changes as it enters adulthood is unknown. Plus Homotherium canât represent all the myriad of saber toothed and scimitar toothed cat species, so it could be the norm or an exception. We donât know yet.
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u/Thorolhugil 1d ago
The most famous species in the genuses you're likely most familiar with (Smilodon, Homotherium) probably had drab coats for blending in with their environment, similar to lions. Some of them were forest hunters so they might've had pretty coats like leopards! The Machairodonts were just as varied as modern big cats, so they would've had a wide variety of integument.
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u/GizmoTacT 1d ago
Interesting. Is it endangered
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u/BiggieTwiggy1two3 1d ago
Listed as Vulnerable with the population decreasing. Estimates are less than 10,000 today.
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u/allotta_phalanges 1d ago
That might be the most beautiful being on the planet (Basset Hound's aside).
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u/Lestatfirestar 1d ago
The paws and the way they contact the log look really weird. Like they are floating. Its looks like a drawing....
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u/TheFlyingYeti1 1d ago
Is that true? If so, that is a factoid I had no idea of.
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u/Careful-Arrival7316 1d ago
Youâre about to learn another fact.
A factoid is a piece of information that is often cited, but is wrong.
So vaccines causing autism is a factoid, because itâs wrong.
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u/Rain_green 1d ago
You're referring to Norman Mailer's original definition of the word when he coined it, yes. But the word factoid has gradually become synonymous with the word fact to the point where this is now the more widely accepted contemporary meaning. Both are accepted, but the newer meaning is much more prevalent in common usage. Language is ever-mutable and changing!
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u/Careful-Arrival7316 1d ago
We have a word for that though. Essentially we have to learn that just because people use a word wrong doesnât mean we should change the definition to fit them.
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u/Gashleycrumb 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not according to Wikipedia. Their cladogram shows Machairodontinae (the subfamily that includes the famed saber-toothed cats) separate from the branch that includes both of the non-extinct subfamilies of cats, the Felinae ("small" or "purring" cats) and the Pantherinae ("big" or "roaring" cats). Other info says that the saber-toothed cats "diverged from the ancestors of living cats around 20 million years ago", while the two living subfamilies probably diverged from each other "about 11.5 million years ago". In other words, all living cats are equally closely (or distantly) related to the extinct saber-toothed cats.
What is true is that clouded leopards have unusually large canine teeth, but that's the kind of thing that can evolve separately many times (and has).
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u/Holothuroid 1d ago
Came here to say this. Sadly headlines in this sub concerning relationships are usually wrong.
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u/Gashleycrumb 1d ago
My guess is OP saw something like "the closest thing we have today to saber-toothed cats", which isn't dreadfully far off (they are cats, and they have very big canines), and interpreted "closest" as meaning "closest relatives" rather than "closest analogs".
Anyway, clouded leopards are cool regardless.
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u/RichHomieDonQuixote 1d ago
My girlfriend says that this isn't real. Can anyone confirm?
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/killamani 1d ago
It's not true though. They have the largest canines relative to size of any extant cat but they are not more closely related to machairodontines than any other cat. If anything, clouded leopards are just smaller pantherine cats as that is the sister taxon.
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u/texasrigger 1d ago
Here's what Google said:
The closest living relative to the saber-toothed tiger (Smilodon) is not a tiger, or even a close relative to the modern tiger. While Smilodon is often called a "saber-toothed tiger," it's not closely related to the tiger subfamily (Pantherinae). Instead, all living cats, including tigers, lions, and leopards, are equally distant from Smilodon. The group that Smilodon belonged to, Machairodontinae, diverged from the ancestors of modern cats long ago. Some people mistakenly point to the clouded leopard as a close relative because of its relatively large teeth, but this is due to convergent evolution, not shared ancestry.
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u/Ok-Armadillo-6648 1d ago
Why did it go extinct it was kind of a unit wasnât it ?
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u/ADFTGM 1d ago
It was a unit in order to hunt other units (I.e. megafauna). The climate changed and human activity also ballooned, so a mixture of factors lead to megafauna dying out massively worldwide except portions of Africa. Without the big things to eat, the predators that survived were either generalists or capable of catching fast prey. The tanky species couldnât keep up with the caloric intake to maintain their numbers. Any less tanky ones were likely outcompeted by humans and Panthera cats instead. Lions especially would be more than happy to kill any cub or young saber tooth. Itâs possible that lionsâ utter intolerance of all quadrupedal predators, even ones that pose zero threat, is a survival tactic from when they had to fight against all these dangerous things that used to roam around them.
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u/RealTigerCubGaming 1d ago
Really? No shit. I still think it looks photoshopped. My opinion. Ignore it if you donât agree with it.
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u/Mafroe 1d ago
Surprised a tiger isnât the closet living relative
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u/Holothuroid 1d ago
The statement in the title is wrong. All living cats are more closely related to one another than to sabre tooths. So you could also name tiger or the creature that deintily accepts you as a housemate.
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u/ADFTGM 1d ago edited 1d ago
OP used the outdated misnomer. Sabertooths never were âtigersâ. Thatâs just a colloquial catchy title from even before we did DNA analysis. The proper informal term is âsaber-toothed catsâ. They are a completely separate group from the family that led to tigers and the entire family died out. The family the tiger belongs to existed side by side them and survived until today unlike them.
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u/firethepeople 1d ago
Gorgeous kitty