Wild Cats



The wildcat (Felis silvestris) is a small cat (Felinae) native to Europe, the western part of Asia, and Africa. It is a hunter of small mammals, birds, and other creatures of a similar or smaller size. There are several subspecies distributed in different regions of the world. 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.

A study suggests that all current house cats in the world are descendants from a group of self-domesticating wildcats 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Near East.[3] It is believed that this domestication occurred when the Agricultural Revolution yielded grain, which would be stored in granaries, that attracted rodents, which in turn attracted cats. The closest relative of the wildcat is the Sand Cat (Felis margarita).