Tuhin Wadud, a professor of Bangla at Begum Rokeya University, saw a jungle cat beside a riverside thicket in Thakurgaon in the second week of October. He had gone with photographer Rezaul Hafiz Rahi to watch Bengal foxes after planting saplings in a garden of rare trees on land belonging to the NGO ESDO.
The animal, about 200 yards away, at first looked like a jackal, but photographs confirmed it was a jungle cat. It sat for a while, then walked off towards the thicket. The spot is quiet, with scrub along the riverbank, a sugarcane field next to it and a few large trees.
Forty years ago jungle cats were seen in almost every village, he writes, taking ducks, chickens, pigeons and even young goats. In parts of Rangpur they are called 'garoa' or 'barbilai'. He notes that there is no medical basis for the folk belief that eating its meat cures pain.
As thickets disappear from villages, the cat is losing its habitat, and prey such as large rats and birds is scarcer. Where one is seen, people often chase it in groups and kill it, though the animal, which can climb and swim, has never been known to attack people, he writes.
The jungle cat, Felis chaus, is a grey-brown mammal with striped legs and tail and white whiskers. Rahi, who spends long hours photographing birds, foxes and snakes, took his first ever picture of one that day, which shows how rare it has become, the writer says.
He urges people where the cat still survives to protect it and its habitat, so that the next generation can see it in nature and not only in pictures.
Source: Prothom Alo
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