I will get an F2 male bengal next week and a F1 bengal 4 months later. At home i have a STB male waiting.
All my cats are male, they are my pets and i have to intention to breed them.
I love wild cats (Alc, fishing cat, marble cat and so on) that is why my interest in early generations as their look is very different.


I have some questions to bengal breeders who have ALC and feline 1-2 cats.

i am located in Thailand, here the ALC is local and i have seen a large number of ALC kittens and grown cats.
Most ALC are not really large and look rather small and slender next to a big STB bengal.

I have seen a huge variety of F1 and F2 cats, most were alc + bengal or alc + american shorthair, have also seen funny results with other breeds...

Pretty much most (the one i did see) of the F1 bred from bengal and ALC had no difference to the ALC visually. We compared them, the spots, bones, colors, eyes, fur, teeth and claws, hardly a difference at all.

Those f1 bred from american short hair were just darker, almost black/white and look rather like the fishing cat, just smaller. ( the bengals and american shorthairs were imported from US breeders, they are all show cat quality, no backyard breeder kittens)

The F2 Bengal i will get did still looks pretty much the same as the ALC, his head is same as his grandfathers, same skull shape. Also the fur, snow white belly, bright yellowish fur with clear black spots.


Now my questions are:

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my question is regarding the average size as i had the impression that STB is larger than F1-2 i have seen.
How big do F 1-2 (males) get in general? And are they smaller when bred from female ALC?

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second question is why so many F2 i have seen on the internet look almost like STB? Especially the head form. When you compare ALC next to a STB bengal, they hardly look like they have anything in common, ALC has a completely different skull, eyes, tooth size.

I noticed that most breeders tend to post a picture of some ALC on their side but always showing the ALC head from the front view, so you get the impression they are all cute. The real cats however have long skulls, small heads (compared to a domestic cat).

Where do most breeders order import the ALC from? As far as i know the ALC comes in some slightly different versions depending of the country, same as most other cats, the fishing cat for example.
How do you verify that the ALC you import is real? I heard that some people in malaysia export/sell F1 sometimes, because u would not tell the difference.

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Another question.
Some people say that all cats bred from ALC + domestic cats are bengals.

Now some of the F1 i have seen (alc + white thai cat for example) hardly resemble a bengal at all as they have a completely different coloring such as white head, tail and legs, random red and dark splotches on the back, no dots on the belly and so on...
They fit nowhere in the written Bengal standards or do different rules apply for Feline cats?

I know that most breeders use a bengal with ALC to breed F1, however originally the breeding program started with american shorthairs and other spotted cats so technically any F1-F3 would be bengal regardless of the look as the breed standards are for STB and hardly can be applied to most f1 anyway regardless of what cat was used.

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very unexpected topic and a great one at that

Well there are a lot of sub-species of ALC and even with any give sub-species there can be significant variation. In some populated area's within indigenous ALC zones there has been significant natural interbreeding with domestics as well.

Zoological Science published a research paper titled "Molecular Diversity and Phylogeography of the Asian Leopard Cat, Felis bengalensis, Inferred from Mitochondrial and Y-Chromosomal DNA Sequences"

The study concluded that there were 3 broad groupings of ALC but within each group there was significant variation present. This is especially true of the southern grouping.

"Within the control region, the Asian leopard cats shared two to four repetitive motifs, and the number of motifs and their constitution were highly variable among individuals. The motifs were polymorphic even within individuals and could be classified into 31 types."

I'm sure you all know but polymorphic means the occurrence of more than one kind of individual, excluding sexual differences, in an interbreeding population. In the study they used the term polymorphic to refer to gene type vs individual.

So we have 3 broad groups with two to four repetitive motifs and some individuals with a motif displaying as many as 31 potential polymorphisms.

ALC in comparison to domestic cats are generally the same size or smaller but there are lines that are larger. Their head shapes vary significantly from what is referred to as the flat headed cat to what resembles an exaggerated oriental short hair with smaller ears. Their pattern and coloration in the wild varies substantially from region to region and includes cats, such as the fisher cat, that does not at all resemble what we commonly perceive to be an ALC.

Cross breeding of small Asiatic cats are clearly recorded back as far as the first organized cat show held at the Crystal Palace in London on the 13th of July, 1871. That first show had a class for hybrids and at least one small spotted Asiatic hybrid was displayed and it is very likely that it was an ALC cross.

The point is that even in the pure blood wild population, if such a thing actual exists anymore, there is significant variation in size, color, bone structure, and general head shape. Cross breeds in the wild population can be traced back over 100 years and it is very likely that it is much more common then generally believed and as a result one would expect all types of oddities from F1/F2 crosses as various dormant traits and genes expressed themselves .

The Bengals we breed today are the result of selective breeding where traits perceived as unwanted were eliminated. Without the aid of this enforced evolution it is likely that we would see all the variations that you describe as encountering in Thailand.

I would love to see pictures. You can post them here as I'm sure the others would be interested as well but I'd welcome a direct conversation if you feel more comfortable with that.

you can reach me thewhites at wildexpressions.ca

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The Whites
www.wildexpressions.ca

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asiarose

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asiarose