We are all familiar with lions and tigers, jaguars and leopards. We see them at the zoo, we watch documentaries about them. But how many small cat species do you know? Have you heard of the Asian golden cat or the black-footed cat? Of the nearly forty species of cats living in the wild, most of them are fairly small in comparison to the lions and tigers of the world. But like the big cat species, small cats are important predators in their ecosystems. They are often stealthy nocturnal hunters with many of the same features and adaptations that big cats have.