Corsican wildcat

The Corsican wildcat (Felis catus) used to be considered a subspecies of the African wildcat (Felis lybica), but is now regarded to have been introduced to Corsica around the beginning of the 1st millennium.[1][2]

Corsican wildcat
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Feliformia
Family: Felidae
Subfamily: Felinae
Genus: Felis
Species:
F. catus
Binomial name
Felis catus

It was proposed as a species by Louis Lavauden in 1929 who described a skin and a skull of a specimen from Biguglia under the scientific name Felis reyi.[3] It was reclassified as a subspecies of the African wildcat by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1951 who reviewed Felis skins in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London.[4] Following zooarchaeologic research in Corsica, it was regarded to have been introduced to the island during the Roman Empire, likely originating from domestic cat stock.[1][2]

The capture of an individual in 2008 spurred a new round of research into this population, and a DNA analysis of fur samples in 2012 found it to be most closely related to the African wildcat. About a dozen individuals were studied showing that they may belong to a distinct species. It has been speculated that the Corsican wildcat may descend from cats brought to the islands by settlers around the 6th millennium BC, possibly originating in the Middle East.[5]

References
  1. Vigne, Jean-Denis (1992). "Zooarchaeology and the biogeographical history of the mammals of Corsica and Sardinia since the last ice age". Mammal Review. 22 (2): 87–96. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2907.1992.tb00124.x.
  2. Kitchener, Andrew C.; Breitenmoser-Würsten, Christine; Eizirik, Eduardo; Gentry, Anthea; Werdelin, Lars; Wilting, Andreras; Yamaguchi, Nobuyuki; Abramov, Alexei V.; Christiansen, Per; Driscoll, Carlos; Duckworth, J. Will; Johnson, Warren; Luo, Shu-Jin; Meijaard, Erik; O’Donoghue, Paul; Sanderson, Jim; Seymour, Kevin; Bruford, Mike; Groves, Colin; Hoffmann, Mike; Nowell, Kristin; Timmons, Zena; Tobe, Shanan (2017). "A revised taxonomy of the Felidae: The final report of the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group" (PDF). Cat News. Special Issue 11: 17−20.
  3. Lavauden, Louis (1929). "Sur le Chat sauvage de la Corse" [On the Wildcat of Corsica]. Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des Sciences. 189 (7): 1023–1024.
  4. Pocock, Reginald Innes (1951). "Felis lybica sarda, Lataste". Catalogue of the genus Felis. London: British Museum (Natural History). pp. 52–61.
  5. Saplakoglu, Yasemin (2019). "Meet the Cat-Fox, an Oddball Feline Roaming Around a French Island". Live Science. Retrieved 2019-06-25.


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