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A wild cat thought to be virtually extinct has been captured on film in the wild, a Malaysian scientist said Thursday. "We have discovered a species thought extinct in Borneo," Mohd Azlan told Reuters by telephone from East Malaysia, where he led a research project for University Malaysia Sarawak and the state forest department. A Borneo bay cat (Catopuma badia), about the size of a large domestic cat though with an extra long tail, triggered a remote camera in daylight on June 27, yielding a lone image from what was a two-month monitoring period. Azlan, who previously tracked tigers in...

The mysterious bay cat, also known as the Bornean cat, is a wild cat endemic to the Indonesian island of Borneo. Adults grow as long as 50-60 cm with a 30 – 40 cm long tail, and can weigh over 3.5 kg. Until now, this species had been recorded on camera traps just a handful of times in Borneo and was only photographed in the wild for the first time in 2003. But more images of this animal have been captured than ever before, together with evidence of four other wild cat species – the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi),...