NHK's popular nature program "Darwin Has Come!" (General) will broadcast "Swimming! Hunting! Japan's Treasure: Tsushima Wildcat" from 7:30 pm on September 14th. The program will closely follow the Tsushima Wildcat, a national natural monument. The camera will capture the cat's unusual swimming and crucial hunting moments, and for the first time, its brilliant strategy of anticipating the movements of its prey will be revealed.
A "wild cat that swims" has been discovered in Japan. Cats generally dislike water. However, the Tsushima wildcat hunts by swimming, and even crosses the sea. After a long-term close-up on Tsushima Island in Kyushu for the first time in 15 years, we succeeded in capturing the moment it swam.
By using cutting-edge technology such as thermodrones to track a mother and child cat that appear in rice fields, the hunting tactics used to approach prey become apparent. To hide, they cleverly use rice plants in the summer and differences in elevation in the winter. They read the movements of their prey and lie in wait for them first. This is a glimpse into the true nature of this noble wild cat that has survived on the islands of Japan for around 100,000 years.
