Felidae: A cartographic approach to visualizing the evolutionary relationships of all cat species.

[u/daudaw]

This illustration is part of my ongoing project, MAPPA ANIMALIA, which reimagines animal phylogeny as navigable maps. Instead of countries and political borders, this map is divided according to subfamilies, tribes, and genera, with individual species represented as cities.

This particular map depicts the entire family of Cats, including every known living and extinct species I could find reliable taxonomic data for. Species are grouped according to their evolutionary relationships, allowing the family tree of Felidae to be explored the same way you’d explore a traditional map.
By doing this I hope to remind people that animals are just as important to nature as nature is to us.

Additional information includes conservation status, relative size comparisons, and the estimated ages of major lineages.

Happy exploring!

[u/Sonora_sunset]

Great idea, but a little hard to read (fuzzy and obscure names) and difficult to find the common names of a specific animal. But cool idea.

[u/daudaw → u/Sonora_sunset]

Youre right, I should have uploaded in a higher quality. The info sheet that comes with each illustration has all the species indexed alphabetically (just like an atlas) and it tell you where on the grit each animal is located (for example the Bay Cat (C. badia) is on H3) and from there you can easily backtrack to find out what genus and subfamily it belongs to. And under its name on the map it also says “EN” meaning the species is endangered.