⚡️ Breaking news: The world’s first ORANGE MANULS have appeared in a zoo! 🧡
Dear friends, we’re rushing to share some truly incredible news: orange Pallas’s cats can now be seen at Yerevan Zoo in Armenia!
This spring, a pair of Pallas’s cats settled here.
Meet them:
♀️ Fiery orange beauty Nano. She is about 2 years old.
♂️ Young wild boy Mano. He is about 1 year old. He may not be as fiery orange as Nano, but he is still orange manul.
Both manuls came to the Yerevan zoo from the wild.
These orange manuls live in the southwestern part of the species’ range: in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In 1928, Sergey Ognev described an orange Pallas's cat from the Kopet Dag Mountains as a separate subspecies, Otocolobus manul ferrugineus. However, in the modern taxonomic review of felids, this classification is questioned, since no recent molecular or morphological studies of this subspecies have been conducted. In addition, ferrugineus manuls can be orange to varying degrees and are believed to form transitional types with the typical grey manuls.
It is likely that the difference between bright-orange and greyish-orange manul is not explained by their belonging to different subspecies, but rather by which variants of a fur-color gene they inherited from their parents. If a manul inherited the “orange” variant from both parents, it would be fully orange; if it inherited it from only one parent, it would be greyish-orange. If this is the case, then orange Pallas's cats cannot be classified as a separate subspecies.
For their amazing new residents, the zoo has built a new exhibit enclosure, and the manuls are already settling in. So you can already see this orange manul wonder of the world with your own eyes! ✨
Mano and Nano live together and, according to the zoo staff, get along well with each other 🥰
So, a new orange dot has appeared on the world manul map — Yerevan Zoo! 🔥
We hope to visit it this summer and tell you even more about this unique fluffy couple!
Many thanks to Yerevan Zoo for the information and huge thanks to Nune Darbinyan for the wonderful photos! ❤️
Comments 30
Omg! This is fantastic news, here's to many lovely orange manuls!!!! And may Mano and Nano settle well!!
No words! This is a real miracle! I’m actually tearing up.
How beautiful they are🤩 I wonder, if they have offspring, would a bride-and-groom swap with our Novosibirsk clan be theoretically possible from a genetic standpoint?
Ginger cats are wonderful! Wonderful news, thank you very much.
I really want to go to Armenia again, and now there are little manuls here too, and ginger ones at that. And I even have a direct flight to Yerevan.
And there’s already an image for the Yerevan Zoo. And it has everything according to the canon — Ararat, 5 cognac stars, kebabs and fruit, as well as a fortress or part of a monastery, of which this country is so rich 😻😻😻
This is amazing news... I was just wondering this morning if this would ever happen! My questions were answered much faster than I expected!!
Mano and Nano are so beautiful! 10/10, no notes! This such exciting news!
Finally theyre in a country I can visit without getting killed 😂
Garf!
Beauty. Absolutely fire 🔥
What wonderful news. I hope the acclimatization goes well, and the little manuls will be lively and healthy.
And if they manage to produce offspring, that will be a huge contribution to the gene pool.
Ирина, Yes, and they might even give Timofey a bride 😉
The Armenian flag does indeed have an orange stripe, the apricots there are wonderful, and now there are also ginger-apricot little manuls.
Actually incredible news
Im booking a flight immediately
anna_yu, I think it would be great to introduce a new bloodline into our group. And what gorgeous little fuzzballs they could be! Let’s keep dreaming quietly🤭
Oh my GOD, this is amazing! My head is spinning!
They are really cute🩷amazing✨️
Wow such amazing news - Mano & Nano are stunning 🧡
I can’t wait to see more photos of the beautiful couple 🧡🧡
anna_yu, I can’t find an adverb that even comes close to describing how unbelievably magical it would be to see little RED minunls! omg! *rolls eyes and faints into a dreamy swoon 😅
Ирина, It seems to me that, genetically speaking, there are no problems with breeding "red" and "gray" manuls. However... I think that, in principle, this is the least of the possible theoretical problems.
But let’s not rush! 🙏🏻 May Nano and Mano always be healthy, cheerful, and lively, and may they become great Armenian cotriarchs-matriarchs! 😻
Omg omg omg!!! They're so lovely, especially Nano... What an extremely gorgeous girl!! I simply cannot believe how beautiful she is!! 😍
How lucky for Armenia... To not just finally get a zoo with a manul but to get this amazing and unique pair too!!!
pallasdav, Will be waiting for your photos! :)
What beauties — words fail me!
Ирина, Theoretically, I think it’s possible, but in practice the ginger gene may be lost in the offspring.
And the news is amazing! Awesome! ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥ginger-ginger!
Already love them 🧡
Julia, Yes! Me too 💘
I think many people fell in love with them today!
What an unexpected miracle!
cheeto manuls 🧀😸 i'm so happy!!
By the way, there is manul manul, there is manul nigripectus, and are there any other subspecies?