PREVIEW

Edinburgh Zoo has welcomed a male Pallas’s cat named Akiko as part of the breeding program for the species. Akiko will be joined by a female Pallas’s cat in the coming months with keepers hoping they will produce kittens.

Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), the wildlife charity that runs Edinburgh Zoo, also manages the European breeding program and studbook for the species.

Andrew Laing, senior animal keeper at Edinburgh Zoo said, “We are thrilled to have Pallas’s cats at the zoo again and are looking forward to having a breeding pair soon that will hopefully help boost the population of the species.

“Akiko has been settling in well to his new home and we are looking forward to bringing in a mate for him in the next few months”

Pallas’s cats face various threats across their wide range, mainly habitat loss and degradation due to agricultural expansion and infrastructural development, loss of their preferred prey and predation by domestic dogs. Their secretive nature and the remoteness of their habitat also make them difficult to study, and they are amongst the least known wild cat species in the world.  

RZSS has managed the breeding programme for the species for over 15 years and in that time, helped establish the global conservation project PICA (Pallas's cat International Conservation Alliance) alongside project partners Nordens Ark and Snow Leopard Trust.