The mythical ‘Fire Tiger’ captured in Thailand: One of the rarest sightings of felines.

Conservationists in Thailand welcomed the news that a camera trap had captured images of the Asian golden cat.

Known in Thai mythology and folklore as the “fire tiger,” the Asian golden cat is one of the least frequently sighted wild cats.

This specimen was filmed by a camera trap in Khao Luang National Park, in the north of the country. He Catopuma temminckiiis closely related to the Bornean cat or the Himalayan marbled cat.

Despite having diverged from its common lineage with the tiger between 8 and 16 million years ago, it is known in Thailand as the “fire tiger” due to its distinctive fur that can appear tan at times and orange at others. Curiously, in Chinese it is not called a fire tiger, but a “metal cat.”

The sighting was announced by park officials in a July 7 Facebook post, in which the golden cat passed the camera trap for just 10 seconds before disappearing into the woods.

Their behavior is perfectly adapted to both their forest home and to avoid detection by humans. Territorial, solitary and capable of hunting both day and night, the lack of predictable hunting patterns and social lives makes them one of the most difficult cat species to see in the wild.

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The Karen people of southeastern Myanmar believe that carrying a single cat hair is enough to keep tigers away. Like the cheetah, it is listed as “Vulnerable” by the IUCN, and suffers all the classic risks to wildlife: habitat destruction and fragmentation, poaching, and conflicts with humans over livestock.

A 2023 population estimate by the IUCN suggested that the number of mature individuals in its entire range could be 7,000—more than the cheetah, tiger, and snow leopard—and could rise as high as 12,000 or fall as low as 1,000.

The wide variation is a testament to the cat’s elusiveness. The intact strongholds, by the estimate, appear to be a mix of Bhutan, western Myanmar/eastern Bangladesh, the west coast of Thailand, the forested and mountainous center of Peninsular Malaysia and the southern face of Sumatra.

SEE the beautiful fire tiger in the video below…