As many of you correctly guessed, this is a Pallas’s cat or manul.
These cats are native to a broad swathe of Central Asia, where they are at home in the harsh conditions of the mountains and high steppes. These cats are naturally occurring long-hairs and as far as I can tell, they are the only species of small wild cat with this type of coat.
Its flat forehead and rounded ears allows it peak over boulders without exposing itself to its prey. That is not a bad adaptation for hunting pikas in rocky terrain.
Pallas’s cat is now believed to the oldest living species of cat, but there is still some debate on whether it belongs in the genus Felis or in its own genus, which is traditionally called Otocolobus.
I prefer to call them Pallas’s cats instead of manuls. I first encountered these cats at the Cincinnati Zoo, where they were displayed by that name.
Peter Simon Pallas, a German naturalist, first described the cats in 1776. Inviting to lecture in Russia at the behest of Catherine the Great, Pallas took extensive expeditions into the lands of the Russian Empire. It is in his study of Russian and Central Asian fauna that he came across this cat.
Many years ago, it was believed that all long-haired cats descended from crosses with Pallas’s cat. I remember reading that claim as late as the mid-90’s.
Yes, these cats do look a bit like Persians.
The fact that long-haired cats do have an origin in an area that is somewhat adjacent to Pallas’s cat’s range does appear to lead some credence to the theory.
But no one has found a hybrid between this animal and the domestic cat. No one has found Pallas’s cat genes in any domestic animal.
Maybe there are some, but I am very skeptical.
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The cat also has somewhat of a monkey snout and mouth.
One difference from the domestic cat is that this Pallas Cat has round pupils instead of the vertical eliptical pupils of the domestic cat.
I was about to make that point, but I couldn’t find any literature that made that point clearly.
I think I have a photo of one of these peeking over a rock on my mom’s computer, I’ll have to check it out the next time I’m over there. The Columbus Zoo has an exhibit with these guys in it. When I was up there last summer, they were closed off because they were trying for kittens.