![]() ![]() He went on: 'Then I took the description of a random breed from some specialized site, changed the name to Serpens Cattus, added nonsense about the Amazon rainforest, added a link to a non-existent Telegram channel for credibility, and let the Snake Cat walk on Facebook.' These are listed as 'near threatened' and are native to Central and South America 'These animals live in hard to reach regions of the Amazon rainforest, and therefore they are relatively poorly studied.ĭr Andrew Kitchener, an expert in wild cats, thinks the cat in the viral image could be a margay, (pictured). Mr Vasilev discovered the image of the so-called snake cat when he was clearing out photos from his phone, and uploaded it to Facebook on March 8 with a caption reading: 'Serpens catus (snake cat) is the rarest species of feline on Earth. 'Of course there may be new species of cat that await discovery in South America, but this is not one of them.' 'The “photo” probably shows a South American cat of the genus Leopardus (possibly a margay, Leopardus wiedii), which has been given a change of clothes. 'The snake cat does not exist and has not been described scientifically,' he told MailOnline. ![]() ![]() It is the biggest of the cat snake species, named as such due to their vertically-aligned pupils which resemble cats' eyes.įurther confirmation that the animal in the viral image was not real came from Dr Andrew Kitchener, the Principal Curator of Vertebrates at National Museums Scotland and an expert in wild cats. It is largely black but has transverse yellow bands along the length of its body, giving it the same colouration as the cat in Mr Vasilev's image. A mangrove snake is also known as the 'gold-ringed cat snake', and is native to Southeast Asia. ![]()
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