Massive 2,000-year-old etching of cat found on Peruvian hillside

Wish I could rec this comment more than once for the Krazy Kat pic :smiley:

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Ha, now that’s a hilarious pot! Not from around Nazca, though, looks Lambayeque to me, quite a ways north and much later in time.

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Yeah, and while you’re at it, check the surrounding hillsides for a cooler looking cat–you know, one that isn’t smiling.

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Felis Catus was domesticated from either Felis Sylvestris or Felis Lybica, but there don’t appear to be any Felis species native in South America. Some Leopardus cats have shown that they are tolerant of humans and potentially tamable, but there’s no evidence that it ever happened.

My guess is it is an Ocelot, Pampas Cat or Andean Mountain Cat (all Leopardus). All of the other species stay on the eastern side of the Andes.

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Hubba hubba!

Lots of candidates! Also a possibility: the yaguarundí, which if I remember correctly is the species Ignacio Alva reported finding a lot of bones from at Ventarrón up on the north coast in a context that suggested captive breeding (pretty far away, I’m not suggesting this as evidence that the people who made the Nazca lines had domesticated them). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguarundi Edited to add: you don’t currently see them wild in the Nazca area, but you don’t see them where Alva found them, either.

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