17 Facts About Sand cat

Sand cat is a small wild cat that inhabits sandy and stony deserts far from water sources.

The large gap between these two regions of its global range was partially closed in 1948, when a sand cat skin was found in an oasis of the Rub' al Khali in Oman.

Sand cat usually rests in underground dens during the day and hunts at night.

Felis margarita was the scientific name proposed by Victor Loche in 1858 who first described a sand cat specimen found in the area of "Negonca" in the northern Algerian Sahara.

The sand cat is part of an evolutionary lineage that is estimated to have genetically diverged from the common ancestor of the Felis species around, based on analysis of their nuclear DNA.

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Fossil jaw and other skeletal remains of a sand cat were excavated in a Late Pleistocene cave in El Harhoura located near Temara in Morocco.

Sand cat's fur is of a pale, sandy, isabelline colour, but much lighter on the lower part of the head, around the nose, throat, and on the belly.

Additionally, hearing sensitivity of the sand cat is about 8 decibels greater than that of the domestic cat.

Since 2002, the sand cat is considered locally extinct in Israel, as it has not been recorded since the turn of the century.

In Jordan, a sand cat was sighted for the first time in 1997 during a survey in a desert area in the eastern part of the country.

In Pakistan, the first sand cat was detected in 1966 near the Lora River in Balochistan.

In Central Asia, the sand cat was known to occur up to the late 1960s in the Karakum Desert from the Ustyurt Plateau in the northwest to the Kopet Dag Mountains in the south, and from the Kyzylkum Desert to the Syr Darya River and the northern border to Afghanistan.

Sand cat is solitary, except during the mating season and when a female has kittens.

In March 2018, a sand cat was recorded feeding on a MacQueen's bustard in the Kyzylkum Desert.

In Israel, the sand cat was thought to be threatened by predation from caracals and wolves.

In 2010, two sand cat kittens were born at the Al Ain Zoo after the first procedure of in vitro fertilisation and transfer of frozen-thawed embryos into the oviducts of ovulating females.

In July 2012, four sand cat kittens were born at the Ramat Gan Zoo as part of the European Endangered Species Programme.