The sand cat (Felis margarita), also known as the sand dune cat, is the only felid found primarily in true desert, and has a wide but apparently disjunct distribution through the deserts of northern Africa and southwest and central Asia. Since 2002 this small cat has been listed as Near Threatened by IUCN due to concern over potential low population size and decline.
The sand cat lives in arid areas that are too hot and dry even for the African Wildcat: the Sahara, the Arabian Desert, and the deserts of Iran and Pakistan.
Victor Loche was the first European who described the sand cat in 1858. He named the species Felis margarita after Jean Auguste Margueritte, the leader of the expedition during which he had encountered the animal.
Read more about Sand Cat: Characteristics, Distribution and Habitat, Ecology and Behavior, Threats, Conservation
Famous quotes containing the words sand and/or cat:
“This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)