What is a wildcat?

Speaker 1 00:00:07 It's Friday. And you just got out of your last class at Kresge, finally the weekend, and you're feeling good time to head home and pretend like you don't have a pile of work waiting for you. You're about to walk under the arch and then you see him lest you forget, you go to a division one school. There he is to remind you Willy Willy the wild cat. He's there taking selfies with everyone. Who's about to crush Sheridan, but getting a selfie is the last thing on your mind. You lock eyes, yours distressed his cartoonish. He looks like a Wolf cat hybrid. You whisper in his furry white ears. He whispers back once again, perplexed by your school's mascot. You have no choice, but to dig around what even is a wild cat. Speaker 2 00:01:06 Yes, really confusing. Speaker 1 00:01:07 That's Rue Campbell. He's a wild cat researcher and mammal advisor for Scotland's nature conservation agency nature Scott. Speaker 2 00:01:14 So for a while. Okay. Is, well, it depends again, I, um, you could classify as any, any truly true native, um, small cat that lives wild in the world. So that's, that's a very broad description. Um, we tend to use wild cat specifically to mean, uh, European Wildcats in this country because that's our only small cat that that's needed Speaker 1 00:01:41 Northwestern. Hasn't always been the Wildcats first. There was for Paul alive bear brought to the games in a cage from the Lincoln park zoo. It wasn't until 1924, when a reporter at the Chicago Tribune referred to the football team as playing like wild cats that the team got its current name. Since there have been other variations, including Wilhelmina and Winnie, but Willie is the one who stuck around, but there are several animals that fall under the category of wild cat. Speaker 2 00:02:10 Oh my goodness is so some of them look more dog-like than Catlin. I have to say. Yeah, it looks that looks like a cross between a Fox and a cat to my mindset is quite interesting looking animal. Actually, it could be a very unusual species of wild cat. Couldn't it, Speaker 1 00:02:25 There are several species of wild cats, but only to look remotely similar to Willie, the Canada Lynx and the Bobcat, I suppose, Willy could sound like a links at least somewhat listen to the call used at football games. Well, they make a myriad of calls. Here's one example of a Canada links, but there aren't Canada links in Illinois, but there are Bobcat's which belong to the genus links. Here's what they sound like. Wow. Speaker 3 00:02:54 BOM, BOM, BOM, BOM BOM. Speaker 1 00:03:01 So maybe Willie's Bobcat, maybe he's not, but if he's a wild cat of some kind, he probably shouldn't look like how he does. Speaker 2 00:03:08 Well, most, most of your listeners will, will know what a domestic cat looks like. And a wild cat is related loosely to domestic cat. And in fact, while cats form a group of, um, the European Wildcats, one of a group of, uh, of cats, the six species, um, that are all quite closely related and they include the European wild cat and the African world cats. And then there's a few others smaller species, um, that exist there as well. And the domestic cat came from the African wild cat, the European wild cat and the African well got at some point, um, maybe a million years ago or something, um, split. And what we have within Europe is this large Tabby cat. It looks a bit like a domestic cat. It's about a kilo heavier typically. So 20% heavier was a killer when in us poems about two and a bit pounds heavier, um, it's drapey, cat, Tabby, stripey, Tabby cat, and it's most crucially a thick blunt tip to tail. So it's got this club like tail that's really distinctive compared with your typical domestic cat, but it's still easily confused by lots of people, Speaker 1 00:04:22 Even if they look cute and cuddly, well, cats are certainly not. In fact, they can be very aggressive making wild cat fitting name for a sports team so much. So that wild cat is the fourth, most common mascot among division one schools while he might not be the most realistic, Willie's at least more cat-like than a few of these other mascots, but he has a lot of room for improvement. According to Campbell, Willie could take some notes from actual wild cats just because they may look similar to domestic house cats doesn't make them any less ferocious of predators. Speaker 2 00:04:57 Maybe you should them update your mascot. So it looks even cooler than the older does. Your muscular is great of course, but while it has to look so fantastic, I think it'd be quite special. Speaker 1 00:05:08 Maybe we should update our football game sound effects too, for w anywhere news I'm Helen Bradshaw.