Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Carnivora > Felidae > Felis > Felis margarita

Felis margarita (Sand Cat)

Wikipedia Abstract

The sand cat (Felis margarita), also known as the sand dune cat, is the only cat living foremost in true deserts. This small cat is widely distributed in the deserts of North Africa and Southwest and Central Asia. Listed as Near Threatened by IUCN since 2002 because the population was considered fragmented and small with a declining trend, it was downlisted to Least concern in 2016.
View Wikipedia Record: Felis margarita

Infraspecies

Felis margarita airensis
Felis margarita harrisoni (Arabian sand cat)
Felis margarita margarita (Sand cat)
Felis margarita meinertzhageni
Felis margarita scheffeli (Pakistani sand cat)
Felis margarita thinobia (Sand cat)

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
29
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 6.12
EDGE Score: 2.66
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  6.063 lbs (2.75 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  56 grams
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Vertebrates)
Diet - Ectothermic [2]  10 %
Diet - Endothermic [2]  90 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  9 months 4 days
Gestation [1]  67 days
Litter Size [1]  5
Litters / Year [1]  2
Maximum Longevity [1]  14 years
Nocturnal [3]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [4]  21 inches (54 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Eastern Afromontane Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe No
Horn of Africa Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Oman, Somalia, Yemen No
Irano-Anatolian Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Turkmenistan No
Mediterranean Basin Algeria, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Portugal, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey No
Mountains of Central Asia Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan No

Consumers

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 5Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0