Customer Reviews

Wild Cats of the World

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A *coffee table* book with beautiful photos by Art Wolfe, one of the best US nature/wildlife photographers. It gives basic descriptions of different wildcat species , commenting on general conservation issues in the last two chapters. It's worth buying just for the photos alone.

Wild Cats Of The World is a very good information and photograph book about large and small wild cats. "Cats have the largest eyes in proportion to body size of any carnivore, and can open their pupils to a maximum size three times greater than people can," and as a result, cats have low-light vision that is six times better than that of humans. The tapetum lucidum tissue layer reflects light back through the retina of a cat's eye a second time and reflects back shined light as blue-green, yellow-green, or red eyeshine. The mountain lion's scientific name is now Puma concolor, not Felis concolor as indicated on page 101; the mountain lion is now viewed as more related to small cats, not large cats as indicated on page 102. In Chapter 3 -- Man-Eating Cats, on pages 122-123, there is an excellent description of mountain lion attacks on human beings in Colorado, British Columbia, and California as well as mountain lion problems in California that have come from the banning of sport hunting -- a recent news story highlighted a mountain lion found in the garage of a house, a situation that appears to indicate overpopulation. On pages 190 and 192, the success of Belize's Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary in protecting ocelots, margays, jaguarundis, mountain lions, and jaguars as well as many other animals and birds is described. There are many excellent calm portrait photographs of large and small cats throughout the book.