THE WORLD’S SMALLEST TOUGH GUY
No, this is not a tiny kitten rejected by its mother and contemplating a hostile world with large, fearful eyes. This is a rusty-spotted cat, and it’s a full-grown adult. These diminutive carnivores intrepidly patrol the forest areas of India and Sri Lank
Prepared to take on anything, they are aware of every movement, all the faint rustling noises along the forest floor. The small animals that move silently through the undergrowth weigh just over 3 pounds fully grown. For three days now, biologist Sailaja Nayak and her colleague Sunny Shah have been waiting in an elevated hunting blind in Ramgarh Vishdhari Wildlife Sanctuary in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Once again the time has come for the allindia tiger census, which counts the number and assesses the territorial spread of the magnificent cats every four years. Keeping their tranquilizer guns and darts at the ready, the two researchers stand listening intently to the various sounds of the forest.
“Something is moving,” whispers Sunny. Sailaja raises her binoculars: “Where?” “Down near that stream.” The young woman holds her breath as she looks through the binoculars: “No… That is a… No, it couldn’t be. What’s that doing here?” Stepping gingerly, a small creature with brown spots climbs over a root that extends from the bank into the water. It stops cautiously for a moment and looks around, pricking its ears expectantly. Then with lightning speed it plunges its front paws into the brown water. A frog just barely evades its grasp and leaps for the shore, the hunter in close pursuit. A plaintive meow with a hint of exaltation rises to the blind where the biologists are concealed.
The two can hardly believe their eyes: Moments earlier they’d been awaiting the biggest cat species on Earth, and what are they seeing now? The tiniest! Here in northwestern India, no less— far from its normal habitat in Sri Lanka and the south of the Indian continent. “Write it down,” Sailaja tells Sunny, “Sighted: Prionailurus rubiginosus, for the first time ever in this sanctuary.” And indeed the sighting overshadows any possible encounter with a tiger. Why? Because this cat is so rare—and so tiny. You could easily hold a rustyspotted cat in the palm of your hand. They come into the world weighing a little more than 2 ounces and never make it to 4 pounds, even as adults. That has earned them the nickname “the hummingbird of the cat family.” Relatively little is known about these secretive animals, but it is clear that what they lack in size, they make up for in unflappable courage and sheer doggedness. With a sense of smell that is six times more sensitive than that of a human being, the cat with the four striking stripes on its head searches the forest floor for its prey, exhibiting a predilection for rodents, birds, small lizards, and frogs. But as the pioneering British ornithologist T. C. Jerdon noted in amazement—a man who described many species of Indian birds and kept a rusty-spotted cat as a pet—these small felines don’t hesitate to take on oversized prey.
When Jerdon’s pet cat encountered a huge gazelle, it leaped right up onto the ungulate’s back and sank its teeth into the neck of its enormous quarry. It took quite a bit of persuasion before the biologist could manage to pry the determined cat off its intended prey. And when you think about it—pound for pound: How can a tiger beat that?