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I've been meaning to do a big cat episode for a while, thanks to listener Damian who suggested lions and tigers! But when I started my research, I immediately got distracted by all the reports of mysterious big cats. So here's another mysteries episode!\n\nHere are the links to some Patreon episodes that I've unlocked for anyone to listen to. Just click on the link and a page will open, and you can listen on the page. No need to log in.\n\nMarsupial lions\n\nBlue tigers and black lions\n\nThe Queensland tiger, which is not actually about any kind of actual tiger\n\nA lion and cub. This picture made me die:\n\n\n\nThe Barbary lion, possibly extinct, possibly not:\n\n\n\nWatch out! Tigers!\n\n\n\nA king leopard with stripe-like markings instead of spots:\n\n\n\nFurther reading:\n\nHybrid and Mutant big cats\n\nPeruvian mystery jaguar skulls studied\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nThis week we\u2019re going to learn about some mystery big cats. We\u2019ve touched on big cats before in various episodes, including the British Big Cats phenomenon in episode 52. We\u2019re definitely going to see some more out of place animals this week, along with lots of information about big cats of various kinds. Thanks to Damian who requested an episode about lions and tigers ages ago.\n\nI\u2019ve also unlocked three Patreon episodes so that anyone can listen to them. They won\u2019t show up in your feed, but there are links in the show notes and you can click through and listen on your browser without needing a patreon login. The first is about marsupial lions and the second is about blue tigers and other big cats with anomalous coat colors. The sound quality on the blue tigers episode is not that great, but it\u2019s a long episode with lots of information about blue tigers, white tigers, black tigers, white lions, king cheetahs, and lots more. The third is about the Queensland tiger, an Australian animal that\u2019s not a feline of any kind, but why not?\n\nThe term big cat refers to tigers, lions, leopards, snow leopards, and jaguars, but it can also include cheetahs and cougars depending on who you ask. Big cats have round pupils instead of slit pupils like domestic cats and other smaller cats.\n\nLions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars can all roar. Snow leopards, cheetahs, and cougars can\u2019t. But snow leopards, cheetahs, and cougars can purr, while lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars can\u2019t. The ability to roar is due to special adaptations in the larynx, but these adaptations also mean big cats can\u2019t purr. So basically a cat can either roar or purr but not both.\n\nThe word panther, incidentally, refers to any big cat and not to a specific type of animal. So a black panther, in addition to being an awesome movie, is any kind of big cat exhibiting melanism, which causes the animal\u2019s fur to be black all over. Leopards and jaguars are most commonly referred to as black panthers. Lions, tigers, and cheetahs do not exhibit true melanism as far as researchers have found.\n\nLet\u2019s start with lions. Lions live only in Africa these days, but were once common throughout parts of southern Asia too and possibly even parts of southern Europe. The lion is most closely related to the leopard and jaguar, less closely related to the tiger and snow leopard, but it\u2019s so closely related to all those big cats that it can interbreed with them in rare cases.\n\nThere are two species of lion, the African and the Asian. Until recently there were also several subspecies of African lions, including the American lion, which once lived throughout North and South America. It only went extinct around 11,000 years ago. The American lion is the largest subspecies of lion ever known, about a quarter larger than modern African lions. It probably stood almost four feet tall at the shoulder, or 1.2 meters. Cave paintings and pieces of skin preserved in caves indicate that its coat was reddish instead of golden.