YouTube Video Accidentally Proves Libya's Rare Sand Cat Really Exists

A man named Mohammed Almuntasir took a video in 2017. He is a wildlife photographer. The video shows a small cat. The cat is pale. It is digging in the sand. The place is in south-west Libya. The cat is a sand cat. It is very rare. This cat lives in deserts only.

Mohammed posted the video on YouTube. Nobody believed the cat was in Libya. They said the video was fake. Mohammed kept saying the cat was real. He saw it in many places. One place was 70 kilometers from Zintan. That is where he lives. Now, years later, people think Libya may have many of these cats. The sand cat is the same size as a house cat. Its color is sandy. It hides well in sand. People call it the ghost of the desert.

Some scientists contacted Mohammed. One scientist is Firas Hayder. He works at a university in South Africa. He studies small wild cats. He found no proof of sand cats in Libya before. The land in south-west Libya is empty. Few people study it. There are no protected areas there. No camera traps exist. No teams study animals there.

Sources: theguardian.com