GoKawiilWhen wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir uploaded 18 seconds of footage to YouTube, he thought little more about the small, pale cat seen digging a hollow in the sand in the remote dunes of south-west Libya.
The video, however, posted in 2017, turned out to be the first material evidence that the sand cat (Felis margarita), the world’s only felid adapted to true desert conditions, existed in the country.
“When I posted it, nobody believed it had been filmed in Libya,” he said. “Everyone denied it, but I kept insisting that the cat is here, in several places; one of them was only 70km (43 miles) from Zintan, where I live.”
Mohammed Almuntasir’s footage turned out to be the first material evidence that the sand cat exists in Libya
Nearly a decade later there is increasing evidence that this was not just one sand cat but that south-western Libya may represent a previously unrecognised stronghold for the species. The sand cat is no bigger than a domestic cat and its sandy colour means it is almost impossible to spot in the terrain it inhabits, earning it the nickname “ghost of the desert”.
Almuntasir did not actively circulate his film of the cat, but it drew attention on its own, prompting numerous researchers to contact him over the years, including Firas Hayder, a zoologist specialising in small carnivores and a postdoctoral researcher at Sol Plaatje University in South Africa.
View image in fullscreen The sand cat is similar in size to a domestic cat
“He convinced me that we should collaborate on a study to document the return of this animal to Libya and register it among Libyan wildlife species,” Almuntasir says.
Libya’s south-west is one of the least studied terrestrial environments in north Africa and Hayder says he had reviewed every scientific source that mentioned the sand cat in Libya and found that none had produced a single piece of evidence or set of coordinates.
“When I asked Mohammed where he had seen the cat, he told me he had observed it in multiple areas,” Hayder says. “That was what surprised me.”
... continue reading