''Catopuma'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

felid Felidae () is the family of mammals in the order Carnivora colloquially referred to as cats, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a felid (). The term "cat" refers both to felids in general and specifically to the dom ...

containing two small

wild cat Felidae () is the family of mammals in the order Carnivora colloquially referred to as cats, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a felid (). The term "cat" refers both to felids in general and specifically to the dom ...

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

, the Asian golden cat (''C. temminckii'') and the

bay cat The bay cat (''Catopuma badia''), also known as the Bornean bay cat, is a small wild cat endemic to the island of Borneo that appears to be relatively rare compared to sympatric wild cats, based on the paucity of historical, as well as recent re ...

(''C. badia''). Together with the genus ''Pardofelis'' it forms the bay cat lineage of felines. Both are typically reddish brown in colour, with darker markings on the head. The two species diverged from one another 4.9-5.3 million years ago, long before

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and ea ...

separated from the neighboring islands. Their closest living relative is the

marbled cat The marbled cat (''Pardofelis marmorata'') is a small wild cat native from the eastern Himalayas to Southeast Asia, where it inhabits forests up to an elevation of . As it is present in a large range, it has been listed as Near Threatened on the ...

(''Pardofelis marmorata''), from which the common ancestor of the genus ''Catopuma'' diverged around 9.4 million years ago.

Taxonomy

The name ''Catopuma'' was proposed by

Nikolai Severtzov Nikolai Alekseevich Severtzov (5 November 1827 – 8 February 1885) was a Russian explorer and naturalist. Severtzov studied at the Moscow University and at the age of eighteen he came into contact with G. S. Karelin and took an interest i ...

in 1858 with ''Felis moormensis'' as

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

, which was described by

Brian Houghton Hodgson Brian Houghton Hodgson (1 February 1800 or more likely 1801 – 23 May 1894) was a pioneer naturalist and ethnologist working in India and Nepal where he was a British Resident. He described numerous species of birds and mammals from the Hima ...

References

Felines Mammal genera Taxa named by Nikolai Severtzov {{cat-stub fr:Catopuma