Wildcat

Distribution

Species range provided by WWF's Wildfinder.

Habitats

The following habitats are found across the Wildcat distribution range. Find out more about these environments, what it takes to live there and what else inhabits them.

• Coastal
• Desert
• Mountain grassland
• Moorland
• Broadleaf forest
• Coniferous forest
• Temperate grassland
• Tropical grassland

Behaviours

Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.

• Helpless young
• Ambush predator
• Camouflage
• Carnivorous
• Tactile sense
• Acoustic communication
• Food storage
• Maternal care
• Nocturnal
• Polygynous
• Adapted to running
• Chemical communication
• Territorial
• Viviparous
• Adapted to climbing

About

The wildcat (Felis silvestris) is a small cat with several subspecies and a very broad distribution, found throughout most of Africa, Europe, and southwest and central Asia into India, China, and Mongolia. It is a hunter of small mammals, birds, and other creatures of a similar or smaller size. Sometimes included is the ubiquitous domestic cat (as F. s. catus), which has been introduced to every habitable continent and most of the world's larger islands, and has become feral in many of those environments.

In its native environment, the wildcat is adaptable to a variety of habitat types: savannah, open forest, and steppe.

Genetic, morphological and archaeological evidence suggests that the housecat was domesticated from the African wildcat, probably 9-10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent region of the Near East, coincident with the rise of agriculture and the need to protect harvests from grain-eating rodents. This domestication probably occurred when grain was yielded from the Agricultural Revolution onwards, which was stored in granaries that attracted rodents, which in turn attracted cats.

The closest relative of the wildcat is the sand cat (Felis margarita).

Read more at Wikipedia