Elusive Arabian sand cat spotted after 10 years’ disappearance

By Natasha Khaleeq

Species: Arabian sand cat (Felis margarita harrisoni)

Habitat: Deserts of Arabia, northern Africa and central Asia

Blink and you’ll miss it. The sand cat is a shy and secretive animal only seen in the desert at night.

It’s a nocturnal hunter perfectly adapted to its desert home. It doesn’t need to drink water as it can get all it needs from the small birds, reptiles and mammals that are its prey. Special hairs in its ears and on its paws keep the sand out.

Despite its wide distribution across the deserts of North Africa, Arabia and Central Asia, little is known about this elusive species.

“There’s an absence of scientists working on sand cats and very few assessments are being made to assess the behaviour, population and status of the species,” says John Newby of the Sahara Conservation Fund.

Lack of records and difficulty in spotting it means we don’t even know how well it is faring. Sand cats are listed as “near threatened” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list and as endangered in the United Arab Emirates, where the Al Ain Zoo is a hotspot for captive breeding programmes to try to conserve the species.

“Sand cats are naturally rare,” says Newby. On top of that, populations are thought to be declining due to habitat loss and falling numbers of prey species.

In western UAE, the cat has only been documented in the wild anecdotally – and even such records date to 10 years or more ago.

Shakeel Ahmed, an assistant scientist at The Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD), grew tired of reading anecdotal reports and decided to look for the cats himself.

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