The Cretan wildcat is a member of the

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

''Felis'' that inhabits the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

island of

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

. Its taxonomic status is unclear at present, as some biologists consider it probably introduced, or a European wildcat (''Felis silvestris silvestris''), or a hybrid between European wildcat and

domestic cat The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small Domestication, domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have sh ...

(''F. catus''). It was previously considered a separate subspecies of wildcat as ''Felis silvestris cretensis''. Crete has been isolated from the continent for about 6 million years. Palaeontological data indicate that the island was colonised during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

by those

mammalian A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

that were able to swim across the sea. Crete's Pleistocene

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

mammalian fauna comprised

rodents Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia ( ), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are n ...

and

herbivores A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically evolved to feed on plants, especially upon vascular tissues such as foliage, fruits or seeds, as the main component of its diet. These more broadly also encompass animals that eat ...

, but remains of predators were not found. Pleistocene mammals died out before the

Holocene The Holocene () is the current geologic time scale, geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene to ...

. More than 9,000 animal bones were excavated at the

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

Kavousi Kastro in eastern Crete in the late 1980s that date to the Late Geometric period at about 8th century BC. These faunal remains also included one cat that was identified as a domestic cat. Fragments of a domestic cat were also found at the archaeological site Gortyn dating to the 6th to 7th century AD. In October 2017, Greek news sites circulated reports that a sheep farmer captured a wild cat after laying traps for a predator that attacked young sheep of his herd. The reports were accompanied by photographs and video footage of the captured animal.

Taxonomic history

The Cretan wildcat was originally described as a separate subspecies, ''Felis ocreata agrius'', of wildcat by Bate in 1906. This was contested by Pocock in 1907, who said the skin was that of a feral domestic cat, but Miller in 1912 considered it a full species as ''Felis agrius'', while Schwarz in 1930 followed Miss Bate's opinion. Pocock in 1951 examined the type specimen and again declared it a feral cat. However, in 1953 the name ''Felis silvestris cretensis'' was proposed by Theodor Haltenorth for a separate specimen, a skin collected at the same time as the ''F. agrius'' specimen, describing the second skin as resembling the skin of an African wildcat but with the bushy tail of a European wildcat. Later researchers sometimes considered it a subspecies of the African wildcat as ''Felis lybica cretensis''. In the 1980s, Colin Groves measured and assessed zoological specimens of cats that originated in the Mediterranean islands. He concluded that the two cat skins from Crete differed from true wildcat specimens and therefore considered them

feral cat A feral cat or a stray cat is an unowned domestic cat (''Felis catus'') that lives outdoors and avoids human contact; it does not allow itself to be handled or touched, and usually remains hidden from humans. Feral cats may breed over dozens ...

s. This view was provisionally followed by the IUCN Cat Specialist Group's major 2017 taxonomic review.

References

Wildcats Mammals described in 1953 Fauna of Crete Feral cats {{feline-stub

Taxonomic history

See also

References