Research overview: the flat-headed cat as one of the least-recorded cats

The flat-headed cat is among the rarest cats in the camera-trap record, and this overview reviews the resulting challenges. Its restricted range, narrow wetland habitat, nocturnal habits, and apparently low density mean that even large camera-trap efforts across Sundaland yield very few images. This scarcity of records hampers efforts to map distribution, estimate population size, and detect trends, leaving the species among the most data-poor of all felids. Researchers have called for targeted surveys of riverine and wetland habitats to improve detection. The difficulty of recording the species is itself a conservation problem, because the lack of basic data obscures the pace of decline and complicates the case for protecting its rapidly disappearing habitat.