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Natascha Jul 14, 2012

The Geoffrey's cats in our local zoo in Karlsruhe just had two adorable babies and I thought the cat lovers here on TT might want to have a look at them.

And they are not the only baby cats in our zoo: The snow leopards have babies, too. According to the zoo's website, it will take some more weeks until visitors will get to see them, but as I have a yearly ticket you can be sure that I will check their enclosure regularly and post pictures here. 

2 users like this: Plum Cottage Bears, rowarrior

SueAnn Help Advisor, Banner SponsorJul 14, 2012

They are so cute!  Looks like they are similar to our wild bobcat except they are a little smaller.  Thanks for showing this, Natascha!

Natascha Jul 14, 2012

When they are fully grown, they have the size of a small domestic cat and are already extremely cute, but the babies     

dangerbears Jul 14, 2012

They're so beautiful! And how lucky that you can see them in person soon!

Becky

Thanks to Wikipedia for the following (I didn't know anything about these cats ):

"Geoffroy's cat is named after the 19th century French zoologist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844). Following his travels to South America in the early 19th century, Saint-Hilaire studied the cat while a professor of zoology in Paris, and identified five subspecies, based on geographic dispersement:[9]

    Leopardus geoffroyi geoffroyi; Central Argentina
    Leopardus geoffroyi euxantha; Northern Argentina, Western Bolivia
    Leopardus geoffroyi leucobapta; Patagonia
    Leopardus geoffroyi paraguae; Paraguay, Southeastern Brazil, Uruguay, Northern Argentina
    Leopardus geoffroyi salinarum; Northwestern and Central Argentina

Genetic studies have shown that Geoffroy's cat is most closely related to the kodkod.[10] At times it has been placed in the separate genus Oncifelis, together with the kodkod and colocolo, but it is now more commonly placed in Leopardus, a larger genus of small South American cats, which also includes the ocelot."

Natascha Jul 14, 2012

The Georffrey's cats are already outside and can be seen by visitors, we just have to wait for the snow leopards.

1 user likes this: dangerbears

peterbear Jul 15, 2012

Thanks for the lovely pictures, Natascha!   :thumbsup:
Although they are awfully cute, I am going to let SueAnn have these... 

1 user likes this: SueAnn