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Scientists have made extraordinary advances in learning how they live and what we must do to save them

A cavernous room in the Sara-wak Natural History Museum bulges with skins, shells and skeletons of creatures collected by long-dead explorers. Saucer-eyed tarsiers, pale moon rats and scruffy stink badgers perch stiffly in glass cases. A giant tree squirrel the size of a Yorkshire terrier hangs from a branch affixed to the wall just above foot-long centipedes and pill bugs as big as golf balls.

In 1992, as part of an informal survey on the status of the world's 36 species of wild cats, we had come to this museum on the island of Borneo to examine the tired remains of one particularly intriguing animal. Its display case was labeled "bay cat." Like pilgrims at a shrine, we peered reverently at a dark, elongated shape--at the time, the only stuffed Bornean bay cat existing anywhere.

In the next few minutes our solemn review of this ancient skin would take an unexpected turn. And in an instant, the bay cat would become a symbol for what humankind has learned about that band of carnivores called the felids, the mostly lithe and slinky hunters that also include the more familiar domestic cat, the tiger and the African lion.

Noticing our excitement, museum director Charles Leh came over. "I've got another one in the freezer. It just came in," he announced. Certain that he must be mistaken, because the last Bornean bay cat specimen had been collected more than half a century ago, we looked at each other in disbelief. One of the rarest mammals in the world, the bay cat was known only from a few crumbling skins collected mainly in the 1800s. No weights, measurements or photographs of the animal existed. So few specimens had ever been found that some scientists doubted it was a real species.

We followed Leh to an adjoining building, where an aging white freezer was wedged between some large crates. And there, on top of a pile of assorted mammals, birds and fish was the frozen carcass of the elusive bay cat.

# posted by Medical Information : 3:40 AM