Family tree of cats

If you've ever wondered how closely related your cat is to the king of beasts, The World We Don't Live In has a post that shows the tree, and typical of cats, shows how much they've wandered during that evolution. An interesting fact is that mountain lions are very closely related to cheetahs. Also, lions are most closely related to jaguars. Ligers, which are hybrids of lions and tigers, are trippy-looking animals. I wonder what a lion-jaguar cross would look like. Or a tiger-snow leopard one.

If you have an interest in this sort of thing, check TWWDLI out. It's another one of my favorite paleo/bio/evo blogs.