The Differences Between These 13 Feline Species

As National Geographic confirms, tigers are the largest felines in the world — males can reach an astonishing 13 feet in length and 650 pounds in weight. They're also the most colorful wild cats, but not for the same evolutionary reason as peacocks. Interestingly enough, the orange fur with black stripes offers tigers camouflage in the lush vegetation they oftentimes live in. As per Sciencing, their hair is made of guard hair, which protects their skin, and underfur, which provides excellent insulation.

Tigers also famously love water, which most felines can't say about themselves. They even have webbed toes, so they're perfectly adapted to swimming. By moving across Africa and Asia, tigers have evolved into nine separate subspecies. Six of these are still alive today: Siberian, Sumatran, Bengal, Malaysian, South China, and Indo-Chinese. The Bengal tiger makes up around half of the tiger population, and this subspecies also comprises white tigers.

Tigers are one of the cat species most affected by hunting and deforestation — their numbers decreased by 96% over the last century. But during the last decade, their numbers have been on the rise, thanks to the efforts of conservation groups such as WWF. At the moment, there are about 4,500 tigers in the wild, and many of these are being monitored so that conservation specialists can devise even better strategies to increase their numbers.

Lions stand out from the feline world for two big reasons. One: They're the only gender-differentiated felines. As Sciencing reports, males look different from females primarily due to their majestic manes. With age, manes grow and darken, and they become signs of dominance. Males are also larger than females, weighing between 330 and 550 pounds, compared to 265 to 395 pounds.

Two: Lions are the only cat species that live in groups, called prides. According to National Geographic, a pride can contain up to 40 members, with two or three males and several females. While males usually leave the pride when they become adults, so as to establish their own, females remain with their original pride all their lives. Here's where it gets interesting: Males are oftentimes associated with fancy names like "the king of the jungle," but it's the females that are in charge. They lead the pride and the hunt. The males are in charge of marking and defending the territory from potential rivals.

But there's one area in northern Kenya where lions live solitary lives. These lions adapted to life on the territory of the Samburu people and the surrounding protected lands — they figured out it's more efficient to hunt alone, and even male lions do this. So, as lions learn to live around people peacefully, they might change one of the very characteristics that make them unique.

Cheetahs are not just the fastest feline in the world — they're the fastest animal on land, per WWF. They can reach 64 miles per hour in three seconds, and they can make impressive sudden turns when chasing prey. But, they have to be relatively quick in doing so, as cheetahs are not masters of endurance. As explained by the Zoological Society of London, a chase for a cheetah usually ends in less than a minute, with just around 200-300 meters covered.

While cheetahs live solitary lives, they've been observed hunting in groups. This way, they can catch bigger prey (wildebeest, eland, kudu) and increase their success rate. Sometimes, males form "coalitions" — groups that hunt and defend their territory together. There's yet another characteristic that makes cheetahs unique: They hunt during the day. Also, they're the only spotted cats with long "tear marks" running from their eyes to their snouts; these help reflect the glare of the sun, demonstrating that cheetahs have been daytime hunters for quite some time.

And if cheetahs still look a bit too similar to other spotted cats, a quick look at the animal will show two defining features: very long and skinny legs, and smaller, completely dark spots, which are round or oval in shape (compared to the leopard's rosettes, which are, unsurprisingly, rose-shaped). Finally, cheetahs don't roar — they chirp, much like birds. And thanks to their semi-retractable claws, they have their own genus, called Acinonyx.

Snow leopards might have spots (and might be called "leopards") but, as WWF notes, they're more closely related to tigers than leopards. Indeed, their small eyes and chunky bodies with thick fur and huge paws are no coincidence. The Snow Leopard Trust explains why: Snow leopards dwell at very high altitudes, on difficult terrain, and on a long night, a snow leopard can walk a full marathon.

They live alone, on ranges of up to 1,000 square kilometers, so they rarely even meet each other, let alone are seen by humans. For a very long time, humans couldn't even catch snow leopards on camera for documentaries, as pointed out by David Attenborough on "Planet Earth." The snow leopard's extremely long tail and big paws help them keep their balance and even hunt on very treacherous terrain, full of steep slopes and unstable gravel. But catching prey is no easy feat, as snow leopards hunt ibex and blue sheep that are also perfectly adapted to running on rocky outcrops.

Snow leopards are big cats, but they can't roar. Instead, they yowl — a high-pitched sound that can be heard much like a lion's roar, miles away and over the sound of a river. Sadly, human activity is affecting all animal territories, including the secluded Central Asian mountains where snow leopards live. There could be as few as 4,000 snow leopards out there, per WWF, because of poaching, climate change, and habitat loss.

The beautiful caracals are the largest and fastest species of small cats in Africa, per National Geographic. They have distinctive long, black, pointy ears with tufts on top, and a tawny coat that lets them blend into the savannas and deserts of Africa and the Middle East. Their highly decorated ears aren't just to show off either: They contain over 20 muscles, which allow caracals to hear prey buried deep in the sand, and their tufts are thought to enhance the sound, as well as act as a means of communication between fellow caracals. Their ears are also what earned them their name "karakulak," or "black ear" in Turkish (via Big Cat Rescue).

Another impressive feature of the caracal is their ability to hunt birds midair — they can jump 10 feet high with one simple, elegant leap. It's hard to mistake caracals for other felines, but their name does generate some confusion, as they're sometimes called desert lynx. However, bar the similar ear tufts, the two species have nothing in common, as they aren't part of the same genus and live in very different climates. Funnily enough, the coat of a caracal looks more like a red river hog's than that of a lynx.

The list of spotted cats seems to never end. But ocelots are amongst the very few that live in Central and South America (and a fragment of southern Texas), as per Big Cat Rescue. Ocelots are related to margays and oncillas, but they're the largest cat of this trio. Still, as Live Science reports, they're just twice the size of a regular house cat. Their spots, stripes, and dots resemble those of clouded leopards, which is why they're sometimes called painted leopards or dwarf leopards (but rest assured, they're not leopards).

Ocelots are nocturnal animals that spend most of their time in trees and bushes. They never roar, which is not strange for a small cat. Instead, they yowl, chuckle, and mutter. In fact, as Big Cat Rescue shows in their video, ocelots make some of the strangest feline sounds out there. And the most aggressive sounding noise is how they say hello.

As WWF reports, the Eurasian lynx is the largest species of lynx and the third-largest predator in Europe after the brown bear and the wolf. They can weigh up to 60 pounds and measure approximately 3.6 feet in length. They live in temperate climates, in the many hills, mountains, and forests of Europe and Asia (via National Geographic). Apart from being visibly larger than their American cousins, Eurasian lynx also sport more reddish coats.

And, unlike bobcats, Eurasian lynx usually go for big prey: deer, reindeer, and chamois. But hares and other small rodents are never off the menu, either. The territory of the Eurasian lynx is huge, so, perhaps unsurprisingly, subpopulations have developed over time. One of them is the Iberian lynx, which lives in the Spanish mountains. Sadly, as they're more isolated than other lynx populations, their numbers plummeted as humans reduced their habitat and hunted them for their fur. But in 2022, Aljazeera reported that the Iberian lynx made a great recovery, from 94 individuals in the wild in 2002 to 1,100 some 20 years later. This is thanks to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and other European organizations, which brought over 100,000 rabbits to their area and protected it from further destruction.