Cretan wildcat
Encyclopedia
The Cretan Wildcat is a European wildcat
subspecies that inhabits the Greek
island of Crete
and was first described in 1953.
Long feared extinct
, participants of an expedition by the University of Perugia
managed to capture an individual in 1996. Two hypotheses of how wildcats arrived on the island have been suggested:
European Wildcat
The European Wildcat is a subspecies of the wildcat that inhabits forests of Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, as well as Scotland, Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains; it has been extirpated from Scandinavia, England, and Wales. Some authorities restrict F. s...
subspecies that inhabits the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
island of Crete
Crete
Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
and was first described in 1953.
Long feared extinct
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
, participants of an expedition by the University of Perugia
University of Perugia
University of Perugia is a public-owned university based in Perugia, Italy. It was founded in 1308, as attested by the Bull issued by Pope Clement V certifying the birth of the Studium Generale....
managed to capture an individual in 1996. Two hypotheses of how wildcats arrived on the island have been suggested:
- It was already present before the mainland and Crete separated.
- Early Cretan settlerSettlerA settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally people who take up residence on land and cultivate it, as opposed to nomads...
s brought cats for domesticationDomesticationDomestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...
. Some of these escaped and became wild again.