IWN Original Report — Wednesday, 15 April 2026
In the forests of Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, among cameras set to track tigers and leopards, a much smaller visitor turned up. A single frame from a camera trap installed in the Dongargaon range recorded the rusty-spotted cat — the smallest wild cat in Asia — for the first time ever at this reserve. The image, captured on 12 March 2024, has now been published in a peer-reviewed scientific paper by the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department and WWF-India, titled First Photo Record of a Rusty-Spotted Cat in Veerangana Durgavati TR, India.
The rusty-spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus) is, by most measures, improbably small. An adult measures between 35 and 48 centimetres in body length — roughly half the size of a domestic cat — and weighs between 0.9 and 1.6 kilograms. It has short, rounded ears, disproportionately large eyes suited to nocturnal hunting, a coat of greyish-rufous with rusty brown spots arranged in loose rows, and a bushy tail roughly half its body length. It can kill prey three times its own weight, though it mostly hunts rodents, insects, small birds, and frogs. It is also, despite being found across much of India, one of the least-studied felids on earth.
A range wider than we knew
The significance of the VDTR record lies in geography. The rusty-spotted cat was long thought to be primarily a creature of southern India — Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, the Western Ghats. Records from central India existed but were sparse. This photograph, from the Vindhyan plateau in Madhya Pradesh, extends the confirmed range northward and adds VDTR to the shortlist of Indian reserves known to harbour the species.
The reserve itself is a patchwork of tropical moist and dry deciduous forests — teak, sal, bamboo — interspersed with rocky outcrops and dense undergrowth: precisely the microhabitat the rusty-spotted cat is known to prefer. Camera-trap surveys covering 442 km² (221 grid cells of 2 km² each) were conducted between February and March 2024 by the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department and WWF-India, primarily to assess the reserve’s mammalian diversity. The rusty-spotted cat was not the target. It simply appeared.
The smallest cat in the biggest reserve
Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve, notified in September 2023, is the largest tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh at approximately 2,339 km². It is also being readied as the third home for India’s cheetah reintroduction programme — a reserve where cheetahs will co-exist with a significant tiger and leopard population. The rusty-spotted cat finding adds another layer to VDTR’s emerging identity as a site of remarkable faunal richness: wolves, foxes, sloth bears, seven species of vultures, tigers, leopards, Asiatic wildcats, jungle cats — and now, a confirmed record of one of the world’s smallest wild cats.
The paper’s authors note that the discovery confirms the rusty-spotted cat is more adaptable than previously assumed — capable of surviving in semi-arid forests and varied terrain, not only in the moist deciduous habitats of the south. It also underscores how much remains undocumented in India’s newer tiger reserves, many of which have not yet had comprehensive small-mammal surveys.
A species almost nobody knows
The rusty-spotted cat is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List — a category that reflects not alarm but genuine uncertainty. Very little is known about its population size, density, or trends. It is protected under Schedule I of India’s Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022, placing it alongside tigers and elephants in the highest protection category. Yet it rarely features in conservation discourse, in part because it is nocturnal, secretive, and small enough to vanish between the roots of a tree.
India holds an estimated 80 per cent of the global population of this species. Most of them have never been photographed at all.
Sources: WWF-India feature, ‘Stealing the Spotlight’ · Madhya Pradesh Forest Department & WWF-India, First Photo Record of a Rusty-Spotted Cat in Veerangana Durgavati TR, India