Journal of Threatened
Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 September 2025 | 17(9): 27535–27539
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.9635.17.9.27535-27539
#9635 | Received 20 January 2025 | Final received 22 August 2025 |
Finally accepted 08 September 2025
Small Wild Cats Special Series
Vocalisations of Rusty-spotted Cats Prionailurus
rubiginosus (I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1831)
(Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) in Frankfurt Zoo
Vera Pfannerstill
1, Johannes Köhler 2 & Sabrina Linn 3
1,2,3 Zoologischer Garten Frankfurt, Bernhard-Grzimek-Allee 1, 60316 Frankfurt, Germany.
1 vpfanne@uni-goettingen.de,
2 johannes.koehler@stadt-frankfurt.de (corresponding author), 3
sabrina.linn@stadt-frankfurt.de
Editor:
Angie Appel, Wild Cat Network, Germany. Date
of publication: 26 September 2025 (online & print)
Citation:
Pfannerstill, V., J. Köhler & S. Linn (2025). Vocalisations of Rusty-spotted Cats Prionailurus rubiginosus
(I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1831) (Mammalia: Carnivora: Felidae) in Frankfurt
Zoo. Journal of Threatened
Taxa 17(9): 27535–27539. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.9635.17.9.27535-27539
Copyright:
© Pfannerstill et al. 2025. Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License. JoTT allows
unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of this article in any medium
by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: None.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgments: We thank the keepers at Frankfurt Zoo for their support in data collection.
Keywords: Acoustic communication, call spectrogram, hiss, meow, murmur,
snarl.
The Rusty-spotted Cat Prionailurus rubiginosus
is native to Nepal, India, and Sri Lanka (Mukherjee et al. 2016). Camera trap
records in India indicate that it inhabits foremost moderately dense thorny and
dry deciduous forests (Sharma & Dhakad 2020; Jhala et al. 2021). In captivity, it is most active in the
evening at 1800–2000 h (Jayaratne et al. 2015), and
in the wild throughout the night with activity peaks at dawn and dusk (Nimalrathna et al. 2019; Jhala et
al. 2021). Little is known about the vocalisations of
the Rusty-spotted Cat and interactions between females and their kittens
(Peters & Tonkin-Leyhausen 1999; Deshmukh et al.
2020).
In nocturnal species especially, the
analysis of vocalisations can reveal the presence,
stress level or information about the reproductive state of individuals and
thus inform decision-making for conservation measures (Teixeira et al. 2019).
Some vocalisations of the Rusty-spotted Cat have been
described as similar to those of the Domestic Cat Felis
catus (Jayaratne et al.
2015), but no recordings or bioacoustics analyses have been undertaken to date.
We provide recordings and a visual analysis of calls of captive Rusty-spotted
Cats in Frankfurt Zoo.
In Frankfurt Zoo, Rusty-spotted Cats
have been kept since 1975 (Dmoch 1997) and bred
successfully since 1976 (Frankfurt Zoo 2024). The facility consists of a show
enclosure and several enclosures behind the scenes, which are not accessible to
visitors. All cats have access to climbing structures, several beds, hiding
places at different heights, and toys in their enclosure. We recorded vocalisations from a single male and from a group of a
mother and her two kittens, one male, and one female born on 27 March 2024
(Image 1).
We used a SongMeter
Micro, which was hung in the enclosure and set for continuous recording in
uncompressed waveform audio file format. Recordings of the single male cat took
place from 24 to 26 January 2022 at a sampling rate of 24,000 Hz. Recordings of
the mother with kittens were taken at a sampling rate of 32,000 Hz, first at
irregular intervals between April and August 2024, and then in December 2024
after the separation of mother and offspring. The higher sampling rate was
chosen to ensure successful recording of higher frequency calls, which we
expected from the kittens. The recording dates are presented in Table 1. Call
spectrograms were created with the software Raven Pro (Bioacoustics Research
Program 2017).
We recorded two bouts of “meow” calls of good
quality from the single male (Wav 1;
Image 2A). These calls were similar to the calls from the mother after
separation from her offspring (Image 2B). From the mother and her kittens, we
recorded more than 400 calls, and several different call types (Image 2C–G).
There was a “murmuring” sound (Wav 2),
probably the mother calling her kittens or the kittens answering the calls of
their mother. This was the call type with the highest number of
recordings, more than 400. A second call type with more than 30 recordings was
a “meowing” sound, sometimes clearly from the kittens (Wav 3)
because it was very high-pitched, sometimes in a lower pitch probably from the
mother (Wav 4). A
third call type with less than 10 recordings was an aggressive “snarling” sound
(Wav 5).
Furthermore, we recorded a “hissing” sound in less than five recordings, which
occurred only when keepers entered the enclosure. Most of the calls were
recorded during the night, early morning or in the evening (Figure 1). We
roughly counted the number of calls per hour by hand and found peaks in the
number of vocalisations at 0300–0700 h and 1800–2000
h, with the highest number of calls recorded at 0500 h.
Our dataset is the first to include close-range
vocalisations of Rusty-spotted Cat kittens with their
mother. This dataset shows that the vocal repertoire of the Rusty-spotted Cat
encompasses at least four different sounds. Peters & Tonkin-Leyhausen (1999) recorded short “gurgling” sounds of 10
adult female Rusty-spotted Cats, which they described as being common to all
the 30 Felinae species in their dataset of
close-range felid vocalisations.
The captive female and her kittens
communicated by using both a “murmuring”, and a “meowing” sound. In contrast,
Deshmukh et al. (2020) reported that wild kitten’s “meow” during reunions with
their mother after having been separated from her for more than one hour. The
“murmuring” call is also one of the most frequent vocalisations
of the Domestic Cat in friendly contexts (Tavernier et al. 2020). The mother
utters this call when approaching the nest, or to guide the kittens when they
leave the nest (Tavernier et al. 2020). Therefore, we assume that this call is
a close-distance call of the mother reassuring the kittens of her presence.
The “meow” calls of the single male
Rusty-spotted Cat and of the female after separation from her offspring are
likely long-distance calls in search for contact with other individuals (Peters
et al. 2009). The “meow” calls from the kittens could be vocalisations
that have been named “chirp”, “tweedle” or “tweet”
that Domestic Cat kittens utter when they ask for something (Tavernier et al.
2020). They might have been hungry or needed body contact.
In an experiment with Domestic Cats,
females reacted faster to kitten calls when the kittens were in a higher
arousal state (Konerding et al. 2016). The vocalisations of the Domestic Cat encode arousal and
individuality but without cues to its sex (Scheumann
et al. 2012; Rutovskaya et al. 2024). Its “hiss” and
“snarl” sounds are associated with defensive and aggressive reactions,
respectively (Tavernier et al. 2020). We assume that these associations also
hold true for similar vocalisations of the
Rusty-spotted Cat.
Studying call acoustics and comparing
them to known cat vocalisations could help identify
the cats’ behavioural states during vocalisations. Using camera traps alongside acoustic
recordings might also clarify these behavioural
states. Our recordings can serve as reference material to identify
Rusty-spotted Cat vocalisations from acoustic
monitoring data in their natural habitat. We encourage further analysis of the
acoustic parameters of the recorded calls, which was not possible within the
timeframe of this project. Our data are available on the following data
repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14592115.
Table 1.
Dates of acoustic recordings of Rusty-spotted Cats in Frankfurt Zoo.
|
Individual |
Start |
End |
Duration in days |
|
Male |
24.i.2022 1600 h |
26.i.2022 0800 h |
1.7 |
|
Female with kittens |
30.iv.2024 1400 h |
06.v.2024 0500 h |
5.6 |
|
14.v.2024 1000 h |
17.v.2024 0600 h |
2.8 |
|
|
13.vi.2024 1900 h |
16.vi.2024 1240 h |
2.7 |
|
|
19.vi.2024 1640 h |
22.vi.2024 1300 h |
2.8 |
|
|
25.vi.2024 1115 h |
26.vii.2024 0715 h |
0.8 |
|
|
22.vii.2024 1500 h |
25.vii.2024 1115 h |
2.8 |
|
|
21.viii.2024 1435 h |
24.viii.2024 1105 h |
2.9 |
|
|
Female in isolation |
12.xii.2024 1147 h |
15.xii.2024 0547 h |
2.8 |
For
figures & image - - click here for full PDF
Wav
1. “Meow” call from the adult male
Rusty-spotted Cat
Wav
2. “Murmur” call
probably from the adult female Rusty-spotted Cat communicating with her young
Wav
3. “Meow” call
probably from a Rusty-spotted Cat kitten
Wav
4. “Meow” call
probably from the female Rusty-spotted Cat
Wav
5. “Snarl” call from a Rusty-spotted Cat
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