Patrick Pester is a freelance writer and previously a staff writer at Live Science. His background is in wildlife conservation and he has worked with endangered species around the world. Patrick holds a master's degree in international journalism from Cardiff University in the U.K.
For generations, local shepherds on the Mediterranean island of Corsica have shared stories about the"ghjattu volpe," or"cat-fox," attacking the udders of sheep and goats, AFP reported in 2019. Scientists first documented their existence in 1929 and may soon be able to declare them a new subspecies after almost 100 years thanks to new genetics research.
Some media outlets have suggested that Corsican wildcats are a new species — Live Science reported that this was a possibility in 2019 — but that's not strictly true. A study published in the journal Molecular Ecology on Jan. 19 of this year found that Corsican wildcats might be a subspecies, or distinct group within a known Felis species.
The French Office for Biodiversity, which was involved in the long-running study, published a statement about the January findings on March 16. Devillard and his colleagues compared genetic samples from wildcats and domestic cats on Corsica with those from the neighboring island of Sardinia and mainland Europe. They found that Corsican wildcats were distinct from European wildcats, domestic cats and, to a lesser extent, the wildcats of Sardinia.
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