India, Oct. 8 -- The Pallas's cat (Otocolobus manul), one of the most elusive small cats, was photographed for the first time in Arunachal Pradesh. Its documentation in the northeast Indian state extends the species' known range in the eastern Himalayas, beyond earlier confirmed records from Sikkim in India, Bhutan, and eastern Nepal.
The photographic evidence is from a wildlife survey conducted by WWF-India in 2024, the results of which were released last month. The survey also recorded the presence of five other wild cats - snow leopard, common leopard, clouded leopard, leopard cat, and marbled cat - all at an altitude above 4,200 metres, at some of the highest elevations recorded for some of these cat species.
The WWF-India survey was...