Enormous Maine Coon has strangely small ears without lynx tips

Strange huge Maine Coon with abnormally small ears with no lynx tips. Image: Instagram

This should be an interesting picture to Maine Coon aficionados. When you look at this enormous Maine Coon who is very impressive it gradually dawns on you, I hope, that there is something dramatically wrong about the cat's appearance if you are into this cat breed and know a bit about the breed standard.

The ears are inordinately small on this individual cat and very positively not in line with the breed standard. And it does not matter what breed standard we are referring to because all of them require that the ears are large and triangular and at the tip of the ear flaps there should be tufts of fur sticking out which are called "lynx tips".

The phrase as you probably know comes from the lynx wild cat species which has tufts of fur sticking out from the top of their flaps. But just look at this beautiful Maine Coon cat with a very strong muzzle which is in line with the breed standard as is the ruff of fur and you will see tiny ears. And there are no lynx tips. None whatsoever.

Either this is an example of selective breeding (artificial selection) gone wrong which I would be surprised about because in other respects as mentioned this Maine Coon cat is in line with the breed standard or the picture has been doctored by which I mean photo-edited and it is not a genuine photograph of a large Maine Coon cat with a young man holding him or her.

I tend to favour the latter assessment. What do you think?

P.S. The cat has a passing resemblance to a tiger. Weird. There is something wrong about this picture.