The image library
Four cats, four portraits.
Each of these is here to teach something you can see rather than read — the interior dots, the melanistic coat, the winter fur, the teeth. Tap any picture to open it, and Rosette will tell you what you are looking at.
The jaguar, and the dots inside the ring
Spots inside the rosettes · heavy jaw · broad muzzle
This is the identification the whole site is built on. Look inside the rosettes on the shoulder and flank: each broken ring holds one or more small dark spots. No other cat on Earth has them. The heavy jaw and the broad, short muzzle are the other two jaguar tells.
The black panther, which is not a species
Ghost rosettes under the black · melanism, not a species
A melanistic jaguar. Black panther is not a species and never has been — it is a coat colour that appears in both jaguars and leopards, caused by a dominant mutation in the jaguar and a recessive one in the leopard. Turn the light right and the rosettes are still there under the black, which is exactly what you can see across this animal's shoulder.
The snow leopard, and why it cannot roar
Long canines · dense pale coat · blurred rosettes
An open mouth is the clearest way to see what makes this cat different. The snow leopard has the long canines and the wide gape of a big cat, but its hyoid structure and vocal folds are not built for roaring. It chuffs, mews, growls and yowls instead. Note also the dense pale coat and the smoky, blurred rosettes.
The Amur leopard, in the snow it lives in
Widely spaced rosettes · thick rings · long winter coat
The rarest big cat in the world, with roughly 130 to 150 left. Look at the rosettes: wider apart than any other leopard, with thicker black rings, on a long pale winter coat. Those patterns are as individual as fingerprints, which is how every one of these animals is known apart on a camera trap.
The film
Fragments, then the eye.
The reel does not open on a whole animal. It opens on pieces — a pelt, a paw, a nose, an eye — each held for barely a second, so the animal assembles itself in your head. The last shot is the one the film exists for.
Fifteen seconds, shot vertical so it can go straight to Instagram. The same film runs silently behind the home page as a loop; this is the cut with sound.