Meet the Cat-Fox, an Oddball Feline Roaming Around a French Island

By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff Writer | June 19, 2019 11:35am ET

A bizarre-looking cat that roams the remote forests of the French island of Corsica may be a new species, according to local news reports.

These felines are known to locals as "cat-foxes," and wildlife rangers in Corsica think that they might be a new, undocumented species, according to the Agence France-Presse (AFP).

These cat-foxes earned their name because of their size (slightly larger than an average domestic cat) and their tail decorations — most of them have two to four rings on their tails that end in a black tip. The cats are about 35 inches (90 centimeters) long from head to tail; they have wide ears, short whiskers and dog-like teeth, according to the AFP. [The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries]

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Dozens of rare Hermann's tortoises stolen in Corsica

September 11, 2018

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies the Hermann turtle as "near threatened" on its Red List of species at risk

A turtle conservation park on the French island of Corsica is asking the public for help after 56 rare Hermann's tortoises, considered a nearly threatened species, were stolen from the site.

The A Cupulatta park in Vero, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) northeast of Ajaccio, issued its appeal on Facebook on Monday after discovering the missing adult tortoises, recognisable by their distinctive black-and-yellow shells.

"These tortoises cannot be legally sold so can only be destined for trafficking," the park wrote.

It also warned that wild turtle populations could be at risk if the Hermann's were stolen by anti-zoo activists who might be planning to release the tortoises.

"They could contaminate wild populations with fatal germs, since they've been kept in captivity for a long time and have been exposed to animals and people which wild turtles aren't used to seeing," the park said.

"Share this message: the turtles may still be in Corsica," it added.

Police have opened an inquiry, according to the local prosecutor Eric Bouillard.

A Cupulatta bills itself as the only site in Europe dedicated to the breeding and protection of turtles from around the world, housing 170 species and more than 3,000 animals.

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Invading giant geckos get stuck on a single building

27 October 2016, updated 27 October 2016

By Emily Benson

An unlikely foe has kept a marauding band of non-native geckos from taking over a tiny Mediterranean island: dust on their feet.

The stowaways to an island near Corsica are trapped on a single concrete building and are unable to leave, as dust elsewhere on the island makes them slip or stop in their tracks as they try to shake off the grime.

Most geckos can scamper up rocks and stroll across ceilings thanks to adhesive pads on their toes. But whereas some sport sticky rows that cover the bottom of each digit, others have just two adhesive spots at the tip of each toe, says Anthony Russell at the University of Calgary in Canada.

 “We really didn’t know before why you’ve got these two fundamentally different designs,” Russell says. But now, a study by Russell and Michel-Jean Delaugerre at the Conservatoire du Littoral in Bastia, France, hints at an answer.

The pair examined two gecko species on Giraglia, a 10-hectare island off the northern coast of Corsica.

Euleptes europaea has toe-tip pads and is native to the island, roaming freely across the dusty landscape. Conversely, Tarentola mauritanica is a larger gecko with full-toe pads, and is native to other parts of the Mediterranean. The authors found that the invader was confined to a single concrete structure.

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