December 20, 2021
Panthera is dedicated to protecting the world’s 40 species of wild cat. However, only seven of those species are classified as “big cats.” What does the term mean and how do these cats get to wear the label while the 33 others are considered small cats? Keep reading to find out and be sure to take our “Which Big Cat Are You?” quiz here!
How to classify cats has been a question that has stumped scientists for quite some time! Since the emergence of modern science, there have been constant advances in the field of genetics and evolutionary biology. Over time, peoples’ perceptions of cats have changed. Some perceptions have changed so much that certain cats are seen in completely different ways!
Since our establishment in 2006, Panthera has classified the seven big cat species as such due to their similar size and ecology. All of these species have large home ranges and act as apex carnivores in their habitat. These cats are: tigers (Panthera tigris), lions (Panthera leo), jaguars (Panthera onca), leopards (Panthera pardus), snow leopards (Panthera uncia), pumas (Puma concolor) and cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus).
There are many different ways people have classified what makes a wild cat a “big cat.” Three of these include the noise they make, their size and their genetic makeup. As you’ll see, what makes a big cat isn’t agreed upon by every scientist, and, as with most things scientific in nature, it’s a constantly evolving debate.
Roar or purr? According to Panthera France Managing Director Gregory Breton, this question was all the noise in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when species classification was coming into existence. How to classify a cat? Do they roar or purr? Sounds strange, no? Well, this was actually one of the original bases for big cats. “Big cats” roared, while “small cats” did not.
The “roaring” cats are also four largest species of cats: the tiger, the lion, the jaguar and the leopard (though many list pumas as number four because the largest pumas are larger than the largest leopards). If you check any of our “Meet the Cats” pages, you’ll see that roaring happens when a cat’s hyoid bone attaches to a stretching ligament in its chest that is drawn down when it exhales. In simple terms: roaring is anatomical, and that’s what makes a cat a big cat. Or so you think.
The problem is that not all cats who don’t roar are all that different from big cats. Snow leopards actually have that hyoid bone, but can’t roar (and also make intermediary sounds that are not heard in small cats). You can assume a small cat purrs, but no one has ever really heard a sand cat purr (though a lactating female is highly likely to purr to her kittens), according to Panthera’s Jaguar Program Director Howard Quigley and Breton. And as you’ll see, even some non-roaring cats, like cheetahs and pumas, made their way into the “big cat” label, by virtue of their size and ecological roles, even though these two large species purr.
The word “big” automatically denotes size. Size is probably the way most non-scientists think of what makes a big cat and what doesn’t. And for good reason! Scientists have also used this metric in the past to try to categorize cat species.
If we are using size, tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards are definitely, on average, the four largest cats. If you’re grouping by size, you’ll add the snow leopard, cheetah and puma, rounding out the “big cats” (this is also how they are listed on our website). If you’re scrolling through pictures of these cats on a simple Google search, they seem the biggest, in general, so why wouldn’t you think of them as big cats?
Obviously, there’s a lot of issues with determining if a cat is a “big cat” by its size. There is, of course, the philosophical question of where to draw the line between “big” and “small.” But there’s also a lot of problems with relative sizes of cats. Take, for instance, two of the largest “small cats”, the clouded leopard and Eurasian lynx. We normally see these creatures as belonging to a separate classification than their seven other cousins. But according to Director of Small Cat Conservation Science Wai-Ming Wong, some adult clouded leopards and Eurasian lynx have been known to have comparable weights to adult Arabian leopards. Adult Eurasian lynxes have even been known to exceed the size of some adult snow leopards! And as aforementioned, many adult pumas can be bigger than adult leopards, too. So, it's very difficult to draw a line based on size.
As Panthera’s Tiger Program Director John Goodrich notes, much of what we classify as “big cats” has to do with our relation to them. Big cats have traditionally been considered scary to humans — they can kill people and their livestock. Maybe that’s why we classify them as big. Lynx may be able to kill our livestock, but there isn’t consistent folklore about fearing lynxes. And, of course, it’s unlikely many have thought their life was endangered by a margay or sand cat. Maybe think about it that way, then. Which size cats would frighten you?
Genetics are the most important tool modern scientists have to distinguish what is a big cat and what is not. Originally, the cats were organized as “Pantherinae” and “Felinae”, respectively, the big cats and the small cats. Lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars were on one side, and all the other cats were on the other. But with what we already know about cat classification, there are clearly some issues.
As the studies of genetics and taxonomy have evolved over time, corrections have been made to these flawed categorizations of cats. First of all, the snow leopard had to be added to the “big cats”, as it is actually of the genus Panthera (Panthera uncia). Then, people had to re-evaluate the position of all the other cats. By the end of the twentieth century, there was a new paradigm in wild cat genetics.
New testing showed that there were actually eight distinct cat lineages. These are Panthera, and then ones containing other groups of cat lineages, such as one for bay cats, caracals, lynx, pumas, ocelots, leopard cats and wild cats. And there’s a lot of complications. Clouded leopards, though considered a small cat, are seen as the link between big cats and small cats with their special genus Neofelis. Cheetahs, pumas and jaguarundis are now seen as sister species, and more closely related to domestic cats than tigers or lions. Tigers and snow leopards are now known to be closely related, more than they are to the other big cats.
Noise a cat makes, their size, their genes — which of these do you think makes a big cat? Maybe all? Maybe none? It’s important to look to science and genetics first to make an informed decision. When big cats were first being classified, scientists even judged them based on the sizes of their pupils and what that said about whether they were nocturnal or diurnal! Now, things are certainly different. But the term “big cat” can always evolve.
Maybe the best way to define a big cat is by the way they interact with their environment. As Wai-Ming Wong says, in general, big cats act as apex carnivores, have large home ranges and traditionally hunt big game (with some exceptions). Instead of genetics, noise or size, you can use ecology to evaluate what makes a big cat or not.
Whatever your method of evaluation is, make sure you cherish and strive to protect all cats, big and small. Hopefully, we can find new and confusing ways to classify these cats for years to come.
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© Sebastian Kennerknecht
