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Margay — printable fact sheet
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Margay
Leopardus wiedii
Leopardus wiedii is a small spotted cat of Central and South American forest, and it is the most completely arboreal cat in the Americas - possibly the world. Its ankles rotate through 180 degrees, an ability shared among felids only with the clouded leopard, which lets it run h…
Did you know?
- Margays are so adept at arboreal life that they can hang from branches by one foot, using their long tail for balance.
- The margay's 180-degree ankle rotation is a joint mobility found in almost no other cat, and it is what allows a headfirst descent - most cats have to back down a tree. It looks very like an ocelot but is smaller, with proportionally larger eyes and a much longer tail, and the two are easily confused in the field. The vocal-mimicry observation confirmed folklore that Amazonian hunters had reported for generations and that biologists had dismissed.
What I learned
Draw the margay
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