Sand Cats

Sand Cat (credit: Greg Hume, Wiki-commons)

Sand cats (Felix margarita) are one of the rarest and least-seen of wild felines. The small cats live in extreme deserts like North Africa's Sahara, Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter, and in Central Asia where they inhabit sandy and stony landscapes far from water. Their thickly-furred paws are well adapted to these deserts, tolerating both hot and cold sand conditions.

The wild cats had been listed as 'near threatened' by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on their Red List of endangered species. due to habitat fragmentation. Luckily, sand cats were recently downlisted to the status of 'least concern' by the organization. A lucky photographer with Panthera, the international wild feline conservation group, happened upon a group of Sand Cats' kittens during a Sahara desert expedition in Morocco. A video of the kittens was released by the National Geographic Society.

WHB

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