The black-footed cat (Felis nigripes), also called the small-spotted cat, is the smallest wild cat in Africa, having a head-and-body length of 35–52 cm (14–20 in). Despite its name, only the soles of its feet are black or dark brown. With its bold small spots and stripes on the tawny fur, it is well camouflaged, especially on moonlit nights. It bears black streaks running from the corners of the eyes along the cheeks, and its banded tail has a black tip.

The first black-footed cat known to science was discovered in the northern Karoo of South Africa and described in 1824. It is endemic to the arid steppes and grassland savannas of Southern Africa. It was recorded in southern Botswana, but only a few authentic records exist in Namibia, in southern Angola and in southern Zimbabwe. Due to its restricted distribution, it has been listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List since 2002. The population is suspected to be declining due to poaching of prey species for human consumption as bushmeat, persecution, traffic accidents, and predation by herding dogs.

The black-footed cat has been studied using radio telemetry since 1993. This research allowed direct observation of its behaviour in its natural habitat. It usually rests in burrows during the day and hunts at night. It moves between 5 and 16 km (3 and 10 mi) on average in search of small rodents and birds. It feeds on 40 different vertebrates and kills up to 14 small animals per night. It can catch birds in flight, jumping up to 1.4 m (5 ft) high, and also attacks mammals and birds much heavier than itself. A female usually gives birth to two kittens during the Southern Hemisphere summer between October and March. They are weaned at the age of two months and become independent after four months of age at the latest.

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

reminders:

  • 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
  • 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
  • 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
  • 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

  • Ildsaye [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    heist movie in which a team is gathered to infiltrate a datacenter and sneak out duffel bags filled with ram

    the hacker of the team substitutes an old tower PC server running a version of ELIZA modified to be especially flattering and nobody notices the difference

  • CommunistBear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    1 hour ago

    I’ve recently become estranged from my mom. It’s been a few weeks and I’m just now realizing that without me tethering her to reality, she’s likely to go full AI/Republican bullshit extremely quickly. Shit sucks man. I was the only voice of reason within her life counteracting her hordes of Republican friends and coworkers. The next time I talk to her (if ever) I genuinely fear that she’ll be off the deep end.

  • PowerLurker [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    just made an agreement with myself to take a cheeky little fake sick day tomorrow and frankly the relief i feel is immense sleepi i do truly be teetering on the brink of burnout breakdown pretty frequently…

  • Wmill [they/them, fae/faer]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    2 hours ago

    If you ever feel like you don’t know stuff I got this life hack called reading you should give a try. The passive part is reading and the other passive part is sleeping on it so it’s like you barely have to put in any effort

  • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    I will not be mad about a football game that happened yesterday. I will not be mad about a 21-0 lead blown at home. I will not be mad about the horrible refereeing. I will not be mad about that DPI call where the Bills gained 50 yards when the receiver never so much as had the ball in his hands and the defender did.

  • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    6·
    3 hours ago

    I got the most wonderful orchid for my mother for Christmas. It’s a cymbidium of some kind and it’s just great. not only does it have 2 spikes that are fully in bloom, but there are 2 more flower spikes growing away healthily, probably a couple months away from forming blooms. the bulb things (keiki?) that the spikes come out of are super fat and happy, full of energy. I dug around at the store for a while and this was by far the best specimen they had.

    Everyone else in my life that I can show just goes ‘oh that’s nice’ without really appreciating it so I’m posting here to gush.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    2 hours ago

    I realized the sliding screen door to my backyard was open so I went to close it. I looked outside and there was a rabbit munching away. The door is a bit broken so it’s noisier than usual. But the rabbit didn’t care. It was a city rabbit so just kept munching.

  • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    3 hours ago

    the main thing putting me off from making a new reddit account is all the bullshit anti spam shit they have that does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop bots but prevents new accounts from engaging in like 99% of interactions until they’ve passed some arbitrary karma/engagement metric (which never, ever, ever prevents bots from doing so)

    Like i really want to post on the EU5 subreddit but at this point it’s like if I wanna do that I can either spend a week feeling like i’m grinding my nuts off doing SEOesque bullshit to make my account flagged as Good or I can like buy someone’s old account or something but neither of those are happening

    I just want to post like “who the fuck cares who’s colonizing Africa and the historicity of it, focus on fixing shit like junior partners declaring war for you or all the insane nested tooltips first”

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      There’s literally a mechanic for catholics where you vote on various papal bulls and they all have different effects but to see what the effects are you have to individually mouse over each one, which brings up a tooltip with NO NEW INFORMATION (just repeating the name of the Bull), and you have to mouse over the name of it again to open another tooltip that actually tells you what it does.

  • CommunistBear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    5 hours ago

    Has anyone here played much Frostpunk 2? I loved the original and have been tempted to get the second, but I don’t want to waste my money to see if it’s good or not. It seems the main character has been changed from Climate Stalin to Climate Liberalism with the whole voting/parliamentary element and idk if it’s worth it or not.

    • makotech222 [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      i personally found it worse than the first. I played on release. Mostly just remember the GUI being absolutely terrible and none of the political stuff being cool