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Animals

Cats know their names—why it's harder for them than dogs

Published 5 Apr 2019, 12:20 BST, Updated 25 Jul 2019, 16:28 BST
A Canada lynx sits primly on the shore of Loon Lake in Ontario, Canada in 1906. ...
A Canada lynx sits primly on the shore of Loon Lake in Ontario, Canada in 1906. These 11- to 37-pound (5 to 17 kilogram) cats live in boreal forests across Canada and down into the northern United States.
Photograph by George Shiras, National Geographic Creative
In a picture taken in 1997, a Lynx gets ready to gobble down a muskrat in Idaho.
Photograph by Michael Quinton, Minden Pictures/National Geographic
Photographer Frans Lanting caught a photo of this caracal with a camera trap in Kavir National Park, Iran, in 2011.
Photograph by Frans Lanting, National Geographic Creative
Black-footed cats crouch at their burrow in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, in an image from 2011.
Photograph by Frans Lanting, National Geographic Creative
The jaguarundi's stubby ears don't seem very catlike, but its haughty expression will be familiar to many a cat owner.
Photograph by Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures
This Leopardus tigrinus, otherwise known as a little spotted cat or tiger cat, gazes from the bars of a cage after being rescued from poachers in Peru in 2009.
Photograph by Jason Edwards, National Geographic Creative
A European wildcat (Felis silvestris) pauses in a grassy field in Moldova in 2009.
Photograph by Laurent Geslin/Wild Wonders of Europe
The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) is perhaps the most endangered wildcat in the world.
Photograph by Pete Oxford, WWE/National Geographic 
A pampas cat (Leopardus colocolo) peers from behind a tree branch in the Cerrado ecosystem in Brazil, in 2008.
Photograph by Luciano Candisani/Minden Pictures
A male fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) triggers a camera trap on a fish farm in Sam Roi Yot, Thailand.
Photograph by Morgan Heim
A serval cat (Leptailurus serval) trips a remote camera in Zakouma National Park, Chad, in 2006.
Photograph by Michael Nichols, National Geographic Creative
An ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) poses on a tree root in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest in 2004.
Photograph by Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures

An eight-month-old male European lynx (Lynx lynx) steps around a dead roe deer in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland in 2011.

Photograph by

Laurent Geslin

The Leopardus wiedii, or tree ocelot, displays huge eyes as it prowls through a forest in Gamboa, Panama.
Photograph by Mark Payne-Gill, Minden Pictures
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