One of the world's smallest cats chirps like a wee bird, first-ever audio recording reveals

[Judi Lynn]

By Mindy Weisberger - Senior Writer 8 hours ago

This may be the first-ever published audio recording of the Chilean güiña


- video at link -

The smallest wild cat in the Western Hemisphere is about the size of a domestic house cat, with tiny, rounded ears, a face resembling a cheetah cub's, and a bushy, striped tail. It also sounds remarkably like a chirping bird; you can hear its burbling chirrups in a new recording, thought to be the first published audio of these endearing vocalizations.

Known as a güiña (Leopardus guigna), a kodkod and a Chilean cat, this pint-size feline is native to temperate forests in southern and central Chile, and in western Argentina. And it recently became the 10,000th species to be photographed for the National Geographic Photo Ark, a database of animal portraits celebrating global biodiversity, by photographer Joel Sartore.

Sartore's thousands of animal portraits, collected over more than a decade, call attention to the beauty of a wide range of species from across the animal kingdom. His images of the graceful güiña are no exception, and his session with the photogenic feline produced the first known recording of the little cat's voice, National Geographic representatives said in a statement.

Güiñas weigh between 3 and 7 pounds (2 and 3 kilograms); their bodies are up to about 1.7 feet (52 centimeters) long and their tails are up to 0.8 feet (25 cm) in length, according to Animal Diversity Web (ADW), a natural history and classification database maintained by the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology. These small cats have large feet and claws, which help them climb trees in their temperate forest habitats, ADW says.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/guina-tiny-wildcat-voice.html?utm_source=notification

Images of the mighty Güiñas in the wild:

https://tinyurl.com/yawyqlpd

[Karadeniz]

1. It's a real cutie...too bad he'd probably rip my face off!

[jeffreyi]

2. No kidding.

May they thrive forever, in spite of us!

[I_UndergroundPanther]

3. Kokod rocks my world.

They are so precious.
Wonderful cats.

I adore every cat there is.
Kokods too.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Just found another link with wonderful faces, and many pages of "Big Cats."

https://bigcats.co.vu/





Uh, oh, a black kodkod just spotted you, run for your life.

[Igel]

5. Ultimately vocal tracts are just tube open at one end.

Rough estimate of fundamental frequency is given by the tract length.

After that, shape--but it's still pretty much a closed tube. https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/sound/Lesson-5/Closed-End-Air-Columns

Small critter, deep call? Sort of like expecting a violin to play a double bass part. (At pitch.)

[Judi Lynn]

6. Feel unhappy to say it but that material is well beyond my ability to understand.

While just staring at it, I was reminded of something I've never been able to understand, either. My husband could do this voice manifestation, and he did it so easily, starting when he was very young, and throughout the time we were together (very long time) until he died in 2018, and until the last 10 or 15 years, I finally learned it wasn't just a peculiar trick he taught himself, but something quite beyond it. I don't think he ever made this sound anywhere outside his own home, or at least I wouldn't have been there to hear it. He could do all of these stages mentioned on this video:

I thought it was just a strange trick he had stumbled across. Had no idea.

Trying to visualize what must be happening inside the "closed tube" to create this sound is also beyond my ability.