Bay Cat - Distribution and Habitat

Distribution and Habitat

Bay cats are endemic to Borneo and widely distributed on the island. But there are two concentrations of reports in the island's interior. The information suggests that they occur over a wide range of habitat types, varying from swamp forests, lowland dipterocarp forest to hill forests up to at least 500 m (1,600 ft). In the mid 1990s, the most reliable sightings have been reported from the upper Kapuas River in West Kalimantan, and in the Gunung Palung National Park. One unconfirmed sighting occurred at 1,800 m (5,900 ft) on Mount Kinabalu.

They inhabit dense tropical forests, and have been observed in rocky limestone outcrops and in logged forest, and some close to the coast. At least three specimens were found near rivers, but this is probably due to collector convenience rather than evidence of habitat preference. From 2003 to 2005, 15 bay cats were recorded in Kalimantan, Sabah and Sarawak but not in Brunei. These records consist of single opportunistic observations. Almost all the historical and recent records are from close proximity to water bodies such as rivers and mangroves, suggesting that the bay cat may be closely associated with such habitat.

A Camera trapping survey from July 2008 to January 2009 in the northwestern part of Sabah's Deramakot Forest Reserve in an area of about 112 km2 (43 sq mi) yielded one photo of a male bay cat in a total sampling effort of 1916 trap nights. This record expands the range of bay cats to the north.

Alfred Russel Wallace sent the first skin and skull of a bay cat from Sarawak to the British Museum of Natural History in 1855. A total of seven skins surfaced over the following decades, but not until 1992 was a living specimen trapped on the Sarawak – Indonesian border and brought to the Sarawak Museum, on the verge of death.