Discovery
The Iriomote cat was officially discovered by Yukio Togawa (戸川幸夫, Togawa Yukio?), an author that specialized in works about animals, in 1965 and was later described in 1967 by Dr. Yoshinori Imaizumi, director of the zoological department of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
Prior to its scientific discovery, the Iriomote cat was known locally by various names: yamamaya (ヤママヤ?, ”the cat in the mountain”), yamapikaryā (ヤマピカリャー?, ”that which shines on the mountain”), mēpisukaryā (メーピスカリャー?, ”that which has flashing eyes”). To distinguish between the Iriomote cat and other cats on the island, locals also gave other cats nicknames such as pingimaya (ピンギマヤ?) for stray cats and maya (マヤ?) or mayagwā (マヤグヮー?) for house cats. Others, however, believed that the Iriomote cats may have just been feral cats.
Read more about this topic: Iriomote Cat
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable—that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)