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 are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“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)
“The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pays itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)