Pallas's cat (Otocolobus manul), also called the manul, is a small wild cat having a broad but patchy distribution in the grasslands and montane steppe of Central Asia. The species is negatively affected by habitat degradation, prey base decline, and hunting, and has therefore been classified as Near Threatened by IUCN since 2002.
Pallas’s cat was named after the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, who first described the species in 1776 under the binomial Felis manul.
Read more about Pallas's Cat: Characteristics, Distribution and Habitat, Ecology and Behaviour, Threats, Conservation, Taxonomic History
Famous quotes containing the words pallas and/or cat:
“And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a “winged cat” in one of the farmhouses.... This would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet’s cat be winged as well as his horse?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)