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Cat Tails

Tails are a big deal for cats

By Rob Breeding

I saw my first wild mountain lion on a mesa in the middle of town in Flagstaff, Arizona, years ago. I spotted the female, trailed by a kitten, as I walked along the mesa’s edge. The cats were only there for a moment, aware of my presence, but not hurried as they walked into timber and disappeared.

Later, when I related the incident to my friend, the supervisor of the regional Game and Fish office, I described the lion’s tail, held upright and remarkably long. The tip twitched from side to side, agitated, I assumed, at my presence.

As I described the tail, especially its length, he nodded knowingly. The old supe had worked that region for decades, and I wasn’t the first civilian to share a lion-sighting story. He told me the length of the tail was key in determining if the stories related to him were actual sightings, or just misidentifications.

That remarkably long tail makes an impression.

Tails are a big deal for cats. The clouded leopard — an Asian species that spends most of its time in the trees — has an extremely long tail. The tail helps balance the cat as it does its high-wire act high in the canopy of tropical forests.

Cheetahs — with an appendage almost 3 feet long — are kings when it comes to feline tails. The tail acts as a kind of stabilizer, helping the speedster keep its balance as it turns. As the cheetah sprints after prey, its body banks into the turn while the tail flares out, maintaining perfect balance as it speeds in the neighborhood of 70 mph.

Mountain lions and cheetahs are closely related. There’s some debate about whether Old World cheetahs evolved from North American mountain lions, and also whether the now extinct North American cheetah was actually a cheetah species at all, or instead a mountain lion that developed cheetah-like traits to become a grassland hunting specialist through convergent evolution.

In any case, present-day mountain lions have retained the long tail. It comes in handy for the species, which is generally an ambush predator but can use the balance of that long tail in those instances where a long chase to kill prey is required.

On the opposite end of the tail-length spectrum is the lynx. Lynx are specialists, cold weather specialists, and in that environment a long tail would simply be a handicap. Lynx are built to retain heat and that’s one thing a long tail isn’t designed to do.

Besides, Lynx have little use for a high-speed stabilizer. They live most of their lives in deep snow, eating snowshoe hares. In such conditions, stability at high speeds isn’t a priority. They just need to be able to power over deep snow faster than hares.

The Americas’ one big cat, the jaguar, doesn’t have all that impressive of a tail either. Jaguars are built like Sherman tanks, with thick bodies and relatively short limbs. Jaguars aren’t built for sprinting down prey, they are built for pummeling it into submission. A long tail would be superfluous.

Jaguars are bad-attitude predators. If you want a sense of that, go to YouTube and search for “jaguar attacks caiman crocodile.” The only purpose that tail serves is as a rudder for the cat as it swims across a lake before pouncing on the reptile.

The jaws of the jaguar are as stoutly built as the rest of the cat. One bite in the back of the head and that croc is toast. And for added menace, the jaguar is the only New World cat that roars. I’d like to hear that someday on one of my quail trips down along the Mexican border.

But for now all I’ve got is my in-town lion sighting. At least that cat sported a tail I won’t soon forget.