Asian Golden Cat Profile
Studying elusive animals involves a lot more boredom and frustration than is obvious on paper. Days spent getting tagged by mosquitos in the sweltering tropical jungle can amount to absolutely nothing of value and leave a dent in your funding eligibility for the next trip.
Many truly shy animals rely on exquisite stealth, and adapt their behaviour to effectively avoid bumbling field researchers without missing a step in their hunting strategy and in no branch of animals is this truer than the cats.
The Asian golden cat is a great example of a creature that makes life very difficult for researchers, but thanks to trail cams and tracking collars, solving their mysteries is getting easier and cheaper.
The Asian golden cat is a medium-sized wild cat, that lives in the rocky forest habitats of northeastern Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and China.
Asian Golden Cat Facts Overview
| Habitat: | Forest and grasslands, up to 3,700 meters |
| Location: | Southeast Asia, India, China |
| Lifespan: | 23 years in captivity |
| Size: | Up to 1.6 m (63 inches) |
| Weight: | Up to 15 kg (33 lb) |
| Colour: | Often Golden, reddish brown, sometimes melanistic, darker/lighter |
| Diet: | Birds, rodents, hare, reptiles, deer, water buffalo calves, ghoral |
| Predators: | None |
| Top Speed: | Unknown |
| No. of Species: | 1 |
| Conservation Status: | Near Threatened (IUCN) |
Asian golden cats share a name with the African variety, but not much else.
These exceedingly elusive animals have evaded much research over the years, and this makes it hard to know how to help them in the growing face of habitat destruction, which has seen the population and its range decline significantly.
These are incredible, sneaky predators, capable of bringing down a small buffalo, and zoos are struggling to figure out how to keep the gene pool healthy as we speak.
Interesting Asian Golden Cat Facts
1. They’re related to the marbled cat
These felines are very different from the African Golden cat, which is in the Caracal genus, closer to the serval cat, and are only similar in name.
In fact, the Catopuma genus is one of the most distantly-related to all the other cats in the Felinae, or “small cat” subfamily.
This genus has two species, the Bat cat from Borneo, and this: the Asian, or Asian golden cat, both native to South-eastern Asia.
They’re both very diverse in their colouration, presenting in a multitude of colour morphs from solid brown to a sort of tabby spotted look.
The next-closest relation to this lineage is the Marbled cat of the Eastern Himalayas and they’re almost as hard to study.
2. They are also known as the Temminck’s cat
The Asian golden cat’s scientific name ‘C. temminckii’ honours Coenraad Jacob Temminck, a Dutch patrician, zoologist and museum director. It is also sometimes known as the Asiatic golden cat.
In some areas of Thailand, they are called Seua fai, which translates to ‘fire tiger’.
The legend is that the burning of an Asian golden cat’s fur, eating them, or carrying a single strand of fur will drive tigers away.
3. They’re extremely elusive
Asian golden cats don’t show up when you want them to. Their whole thing is that they’re stealthy and this makes them hard to find.
Most observations come from camera traps, as researchers are bumbling noise machines whose smell and commotion are immediately clear to any sharp feline in the area.
As such, we don’t know all that much about what they do or where they go, and who they go with. 1
4. They are out when nobody’s looking
Tracking animals isn’t always easy. When field researchers are trying to figure out what time of day a cat is active, the answer is usually: whatever time the researchers aren’t.
With animals as versatile as the golden cat, activity patterns will inversely correlate with how many people are looking, so tracking collars give a much more accurate result.
From these, it’s thought that the cats are more or less solitary and territorial. While they were thought to be nocturnal, this was likely a symptom of the presence of researchers, and collars show that they are far more diurnal and crepuscular (active in the twilight hours) than was assumed.
They’ll patrol their territories up to 9 km a day, and sometimes as little as 55 meters. Their activity appears to increase and decrease in relation to the seasons, with more movement during the rainy months.
5. Mating has only been recorded in zoos
Because we never get a good look at them, nobody’s ever seen them mate in the wild. These cats are not exhibitionists, but will eventually get desperate enough to shag with a crowd watching if kept in zoos with no other option.
Various zoos have had a combined success rate at reproduction of 78%, while other zoos have “experienced fatalities” upon introducing one wild, solitary predator to another, suggesting it’s not all moonlight and roses for the cats.
Weaning occurs at 6 months, and cubs are separated from their mother at around 9 months, likely to prevent more fatalities. 2
6. They’re powerful!
As you might have guessed from the lethal squabbles, these cats are no pushovers.
Like most small cats, they kill with a high-pressure bite to the spine or skull and with this technique, they can make short work of birds, hares, rodents and reptiles.
But they have been known to kill water buffalo calves and sambar deer.
Like all small cats, they communicate with a selection of hissing, spitting, meowing, purring, growling, and gurgling. They also piss everywhere.
7. Habitat conversion threatens them
This is a species that thrives in varied habitats. But sadly, their range has been limited by the encroachment of poachers, who hunt them for their pelts, and many are now only found in protected sanctuaries.
They depend to a degree on forests, which are becoming scarce all over the world, and their range happens to be exactly where the degree of deforestation is the highest, globally.
There is a small number of cats left in China and Vietnam, where they face imminent extinction, and in Vietnam in particular, they’re hunted as a replacement for tiger pelt. 3
8. They are not sufficiently protected against poaching
While poaching of these cats is (by definition) illegal across their range, these protections are not sufficiently enforced, and international buyers appear to be in the market for the pelts found for sale.
China and Thailand in particular have been found selling pelts, despite the practice being against the countries’ legislation and restricted by CITES.
Currently, at least eight European zoos are in the process of running a breeding program for the species. 4
Asian Golden Cat Fact-File Summary
Scientific Classification
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Subfamily: | Felinae |
| Genus: | Catopuma |
| Species: | Catopuma Temminckii |
Fact Sources & References
- Frankfurt Zoological Society (2021), “Asiatic Golden Cat (Catopuma temminckii)”, YouTube.
- “Catopuma temminckii Asiatic golden cat”, Animal Diversity Web.
- “Asiatic Golden Cat”, IUCN Red List.
- Becky Crewe (2013), “Rare Asiatic Golden Cats are World-First Test Tube Babies”, Scientific American.