NAMIBE: A team of scientists luckily filmed a very rare African golden cat while attacking a red colubus monkey in Uganda.Scientists could not believe their luck when they managed to capture the first ever video footage of an unusual wild cat and caught him hunting monkeys.
According to the scientists, this is the first video of the rare African golden cat hunting in a broad daylight. The footage was released on January 27. The scientists from the conservation group Panthera, said the footage was one of a kind.
David Mills, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa said that there is very little thing known about the behavior of the rare African golden cat.
The video was taken while a group of primatologists from Kibale was observing monkeys. Based on their observation, the monkeys often make an alarming sound when they sensed an African golden cat. Seeing the footage, Mills said he now understand the fear that the monkey have whenever seeing this reclusive cat.
The footage was recorded by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. The monkeys were feeding when the wild cat attacked them.
An African golden cat can be as big as a bobcat and can weigh 5 to 16 kg (11-35 lbs.). It is currently under the extinction list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The first known image of the rare African golden cat was released in 2002. They normally live in the forests of west and central Africa.
In 2012, a team of researchers used fragrance Obsession by Calvin Klein to lure the wild cat and take videos of it. The footage was taken in Kibale.
According to the researchers, the rare cats are attracted to the smell of CK’s Obsession because it contains civetone, an extract from the glands of civet.
