Viral YouTube clip confirms sand cat in Libya and sparks eight year study | Ukraine news

A brief 18 second video led researchers to rediscover an elusive desert cat in Libya, prompting an eight year field collaboration and new conservation concerns.

Not every YouTube video becomes a catalyst for a grand scientific breakthrough, but that’s exactly what happened when Mohammed Almuntasir accidentally started his channel in 2017.

The 18-second frame showed a small desert-dwelling cat warming itself under a shrub in the Libyan desert. Later the video was confirmed as the first documentary evidence that Libya is home to the sand cat (Felis margarita) – a wild cat species that had long been sought after and rarely observed in these parts.

As a long-time field photographer of plants and animals in Libya, Almuntasir admitted that he had previously seen sand cats, but their nocturnal activity made it hard to capture the animal on film.

Як тільки я побачив тварину, я зрозумів, що це пустельна кішка, бо бачив цей вид раніше вночі.

– Mohammed Almuntasir, CNN

Однак я ніколи не міг зняти її, бо не мав камери, придатної для нічної зйомки, або камер-ловушок.

– Mohammed Almuntasir, CNN

Almuntasir noted that small desert cats, typically up to 57 cm long and weighing around 3.5 kg, had already been documented in his homeland. However, despite isolated reports from the mid-20th century, the sand cat (Felis margarita) had not officially been considered a local Libyan species; a North African small carnivore expert, Firas Haider, told CNN that these cats were initially linked to Sahara deserts in other North African countries such as Morocco, as well as to southern and central Asia.

This was a shock for Haider when he reached out to Almuntasir a few weeks after the video’s publication – he confirmed that the “sand cat in Libya” was indeed filmed in the Al-Hamada Al-Hamra region in the Libyan desert near the border with Tunisia.

Хайдер розповів, що для нього було шоком, коли Almuntasir підтвердив: “перший запис”; Він спитав: “Ви впевнені?” Я відповів: “Так, це перший запис.”

– Фірас Хайдер

Since then, the pair joined forces for an eight-year period to gather documented observations of sand cats, as well as Saharan striped polecats, in Libya. This collection spurred the work “Rediscovering desert ghosts” (Pереосмислюючи пустельних привидів), which was published in the Journal of Arid Environments in February this year. Co-authors of the study were seven scientists; Haider coordinated the operation remotely, studying how to record GPS coordinates of sand cat sighting locations, while Almuntasir worked with local guides to track and observe the animals.

Almuntasir quickly realized that this was an extremely challenging task. Sand cats lead a nocturnal lifestyle, actively hunting rodents and reptiles; they are known as highly burrowing animals: they live in burrows during the hot day and even often bury their droppings and scraps of meals to conserve water for the next hunt. Much of their homes and tracks are quickly washed away by sands, which explains their variable detectability and the low amount of population data. In 2017, three young cats were documented in the wild for the first time, hiding among Libya’s desert shrub cover, and these frames quickly went viral thanks to social media.

According to the study, Almuntasir logged into the database 24 of the 36 most documented sand cat sightings, with data collected from 13 locations across the Libyan Sahara, mainly in the country’s southwestern region. This suggests that the region may be considered a potential stronghold for the species. However, the material also highlights significant “gaps” in knowledge that must be closed to prevent the sand cats from disappearing in Libya and beyond.

Against this background it turned out that the species currently has the IUCN status of “Least Concern” – i.e., not listed as threatened. Meanwhile scientists had previously advocated revisiting such an assessment since the range size, limited resources, and a sensitive ecosystem could put sand cats at risk. According to Grégory Breton, who was cited as a co-author of the study on Moroccan sand cats, in 2023 there were cases of these cats being captured for illegal pet trade, which further underscores the need for monitoring and protection.

За словами Grégory Breton, який співавтор дослідження марокканських sand cats, опублікованого у 2023 році, були випадки захоплення цих котів для незаконної торгівлі домашніми тваринами.

– Grégory Breton

Haider confirms that the presence of this intensified focus is meaningfully tied to the environment: the animals are extremely sensitive to rising temperatures, and the sand cat can serve as an indicator of climate change. In reports from Libya, sand cats on the market are often sold as pets, while hunters spoke of cases of their being killed for meat. For Haider, this reflects that local awareness of small carnivores in the region remains insufficient, fueling human-wildlife conflicts and reducing the chances of conserving these species.

For Haider, this story is painfully familiar and pushes him to intensify awareness and scientific understanding of small carnivores – from the caracal to the fennec – in North Africa. He believes that the lack of broad public education about the various species fuels conflicts between people and wild animals, something that has already been studied in the context of negative perceptions on social media about the Egyptian fox.

Thus, the YouTube video story was not just a happy accident. It became a spur for international scientific collaboration, which requires precise data and ongoing monitoring to conserve the desert ghosts – the desert specters – in Libya and beyond. It also underscores the importance of educational and scientific work with the region’s small carnivores to preserve biodiversity and prevent further losses of these enigmatic creatures.