Subject: Taxonomy of Felidae

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 21:39:23 -0400

There are variations in fineness at the genus level
(http://www.primenet.com/~brendel/felidae.html is one of the finer schemes),
but in general cats fall into three subfamilies: big cats, little cats, and
cheetahs. It seems to me that the three words we have cover the family as
follows: mlatu covers the little cats (note that the mountain lion is a little
cat, despite being called lion), cinfo the big cats without markings, and tirxu
the big cats with markings (including the panther, who has black spots on a
black background) and the cheetah. I propose some more words for specific cats:
ja'urtirxu [tirxu]: cheetah
karkala [mlatu]: caracal
pardali [mlatu, no p3 even though it has spots]: ocelot
ma'armlatu [mlatu]: mountain lion
diltirxu [tirxu]: clouded leopard
pantera [tirxu]: leopard, panther (xekri pantera)

phma