When wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir uploaded 18 seconds of footage to YouTube in 2017, he gave little thought to the small, pale cat seen excavating a hollow in the sand within the remote dunes of south-west Libya. The video would subsequently prove to be the first material evidence that the sand cat (Felis margarita)—the world's only felid species adapted to true desert conditions—existed within the country. "When I posted it, nobody believed it had been filmed in Libya," he later stated. "Everyone denied it, but I kept insisting that the cat is here, in several places; one of them was only 70km from Zintan, where I live."
Nearly a decade later, increasing evidence suggests this was not merely a solitary specimen but that south-western Libya may constitute a previously unrecognised stronghold for the species. The sand cat, no larger than a domestic feline and possessing sandy coloration, is virtually indistinguishable from the terrain it inhabits—rendering it almost impossible to detect and earning it the epithet "ghost of the desert." Though Almuntasir did not actively circulate his film, it garnered attention organically, prompting numerous researchers to contact him over the years, including Firas Hayder, a zoologist specializing in small carnivores and postdoctoral researcher at Sol Plaatje University in South Africa. "He convinced me that we should collaborate on a study to document the return of this animal to Libya and register it among Libyan wildlife species," Almuntasir explained.
Hayder had meticulously reviewed every scientific source that mentioned the sand cat in Libya and discovered that none had produced a single piece of evidence or set of coordinates. "When I asked Mohammed where he had seen the cat, he told me he had observed it in multiple areas," Hayder noted. "That was what surprised me." Libya's south-west represents one of the least studied terrestrial environments in north Africa. As Hayder explained, these ecological hotspots lack protected areas, camera trap infrastructure, trained field teams, and a functioning central authority to coordinate research efforts.