Discovery
The Iriomote cat was officially discovered by Yukio Togawa (戸川幸夫, Togawa Yukio?), an author that specialized in works about animals, in 1965 and was later described in 1967 by Dr. Yoshinori Imaizumi, director of the zoological department of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
Prior to its scientific discovery, the Iriomote cat was known locally by various names: yamamaya (ヤママヤ?, ”the cat in the mountain”), yamapikaryā (ヤマピカリャー?, ”that which shines on the mountain”), mēpisukaryā (メーピスカリャー?, ”that which has flashing eyes”). To distinguish between the Iriomote cat and other cats on the island, locals also gave other cats nicknames such as pingimaya (ピンギマヤ?) for stray cats and maya (マヤ?) or mayagwā (マヤグヮー?) for house cats. Others, however, believed that the Iriomote cats may have just been feral cats.
Read more about this topic: Iriomote Cat
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)