By Cameron de Jong
I’d like to share an observation of a Flat-headed Cat at Uncle Tan’s Wildlife Camp on the Kinabatangan River. I’m an ecologist and I’m aware these are poorly known animals so I’m hoping my observation and photos might be useful.
We were on a night walk with a guide at Uncle Tan’s and sighted the Flat-headed Cat (adult) at approx 10:35pm on 7 March 2024 in an ephemeral wetland adjacent to the river. There had been a flood about 3 weeks earlier so this wetland had water to maybe 20cm depth. I’m unsure of the dominant tree species in the wetland but it had distinct buttresses and should be easily identifiable to describe the vegetation community.
The cat was sitting in the buttress within about 10cm of the water, and had to have waded through water to reach this tree. We watched it for maybe 10 minutes before it slowly rose and moved off into the wetland beyond view of our torches. In this time it licked its paws and stretched, apparently not too fazed by us.
The wetland was thick with frogs including Rough-sided Frog (Pulchrana sp. I think – the largest and most terrestrial so probably the target prey item?) Cricket Frog (Amnirana nicobariensis), Harlequin Tree Frog (Rhacophorus pardalis) and several others. There were also Snake-headed Catfish (?) in the water as advised by the guides, and probably crustaceans etc as well. We also observed a Moon Rat actively foraging on the wetland edge, about 20m from the cat – the two were either unaware of each other or not engaging with each other.
About an hour after the sighting I came back this way and saw the cat again in the same area, I think hunting in the wetland, but it was further away and was identifiable by the bright green eyeshine and body shape only.
The guides were very excited and hadn’t seen this cat in a long time, but this may be a reliable place to see or study them given this animal was within the extent of the camp itself. It was only 10-12m from the boardwalk when we initially saw it.
