Iriomote cat
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
The Iriomote cat mother raises her young during summer.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Iriomote cat
- Scientific name
- Prionailurus bengalensis iriomotensis
- Japanese name
- イリオモテヤマネコ
- Group
- Land mammals
- Class
- Mammalia
- Order
- Carnivora
- Family
- Felidae
- Genus
- Prionailurus
The Iriomote cat is treated as a subspecies of the leopard cat.
A wild cat found on Iriomote Island in Okinawa and nowhere else. It lives mainly in the lowlands between the foot of the mountains and the coast.
It eats many kinds of animals, including lizards, snakes, frogs, insects such as crickets, bats, birds and shrimp.
It is active mainly at night, especially around dusk and dawn, and usually lives alone.
How the Iriomote cat lives
Kittens are born around spring. Around autumn to winter, the kittens leave their mother and go their own ways. Cats that settle down have established home ranges.
環境省 西表野生生物保護センターBasic data
- Size
- Head and body length: about 50–60 cm
- Active
- At night (nocturnal)
- Diet
- Lizards, snakes, frogs, insects, flying foxes, birds, freshwater prawns and other animals
- Range
- Iriomote Island, Okinawa
- Conservation status in Japan
- Critically Endangered (CR)Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Red List 2020
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- イリオモテヤマネコ
- 简体中文
- 西表山猫
- 繁體中文
- 西表山貓
- 한국어
- 이리오모테삵
- Español
- Prionailurus iriomotensis
- Français
- Chat D'Irimote
- Deutsch
- Iriomote-Katze
- Português (Brasil)
- Gato-de-iriomote
- Italiano
- Prionailurus iriomotensis
- العربية
- قط إيريوموته
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Kucing iriomote
- Tiếng Việt
- Prionailurus iriomotensis
- Русский
- Ириомотейская кошка
- Türkçe
- Iriomote kedisi
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 環境省 西表野生生物保護センター — イリオモテヤマネコとはChecked: 2026-11-03
- Ministry of the Environment of Japan, Red List 2020Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
The conservation status in Japan is the category in the Red Lists of the Ministry of the Environment of Japan, which assess the risk of extinction for wild animals in Japan.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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