Cats captured in the High Andes close a door to potential monitoring programs

Abstract

Because of their similarities Pampas and Andean cats are usually studied simultaneously in areas where they overlap, but these similarities have been often an obstacle for researchers. The foot morphology was reported as useful to differentiate these species and potentially develop monitoring program based on footprints. With the objective to attach radiocollars, two Pampas cats and one Andean cat were captured in the Argentinean High Andes. This enabled us to observe a high variability in the Pampas cat foot and conclude that a monitoring program based on footprints would be unreliable at least until a more detailed study on foot morphology is carried out.