Marwell welcomes shy, climbing Clouded Leopards

Marwell Zoo in Hampshire has taken ownership of two female Clouded Leopards.

The sisters (Taevey and Kanya) are currently settling into their new enclosure and are both doing well. According to the zoo clouded Leopards are ''beautiful medium-sized cats that are quite shy, love climbing and have incredibly long canine teeth.''

The animals are increasingly rare. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) there are only 3,700 to 5,580 Clouded Leopards left in the wild.

Marwell lists some ''Did You Know'' facts:

• Clouded Leopards can purr but can’t roar. Despite their small stature, their feeding, stalking and grooming behaviour is much like that of their big cat relatives.

• They can also open their mouths up to 100 degrees thanks to their unique skull structure, which is similar to that of a primitive sabre-toothed cat!

• Clouded Leopards are great climbers and are native to Asia inhabiting the rain forests of Indonesia, the Himalayas in Nepal and parts of mainland South East Asia.Clouded Leopards can live at altitudes of up to 3,500m, preferring to live in closed evergreen rainforests and shrubland where they can easily hide thanks to their patterned coats. Primarily nocturnal, Clouded Leopards sit somewhere between big and small cats in terms of size, with wild females in Thailand weighing between 11.5 and 13.5kg and males 16-18kg.They can be quite shy and love densely packed vegetation so guests may

• They can be quite shy and love densely packed vegetation so guests may need to be quiet and patient when visiting in order to spot them. Clouded Leopards have particularly long tails and huge canine teeth, which are well adapted to their carnivorous diet of hog deer, brush-tailed porcupine, Malayan pangolin and Indochinese ground squirrel in the wild.