One of the world’s most elusive wildcats captured on camera

By Emily Phillips

Trail cameras have recorded rare footage of the oldest ever big cat from an elusive leopard species.

The Sunda clouded leopard is one of the world's rarest wildcats and dubbed "the ghosts of the forest," because of how easily they blend into their surroundings and how rarely they are seen by humans.

But a trail camera in Sabah, Malaysia, captured never-before-seen images of an eight-and-a-half-year-old creature prowling through rainforests in northern Borneo,

The pictures were taken as part of research conducted by Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization, Sabah Forestry Department, the Sabah Wildlife Department and the indigenous peoples of Sabah.

This big cat was first seen in July 2009 and these photos show it in October 2015. But they have only just been released to the public in a study in the journal Biotropica.

The study monitored the creatures up until 2023, along three reserves in Sabah and recorded 52 adult cats.

The photos of the eight-and-a-half-year-old are said to be the first to document a female's lifespan in the wild.

The data also confirmed these leopards are far more mobile than previously assumed, travelling up to 36 km between forest reserves.

The study noted: "Previous lifespan estimates for Sunda clouded leopards have been limited to males.

"Our study contributes a key advancement by documenting a minimum lifespan of 6.51 years for a female.

"Notably, female Sunda clouded leopards are considerably harder to detect via camera-traps, as evidenced by 68.05% fewer records and a male-dominated adult sex ratio of 30:22 - a pattern consistently reported in prior camera-trap studies."

It is thought females spend far more time in the trees, and their slender bodies and fluffier tails help them balance there.

Males, by contrast, spend much of their time on the ground patrolling and re-marking territory, which is why they turn up on camera more often.

The Sunda clouded leopard is found in Borneo and Sumatra, is rarely seen and carries the largest canine teeth of any wild cat relative to body size, drawing comparisons to saber-toothed cats.

They are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List, with an estimated population of fewer than 10,000 mature individuals worldwide.