Everything about The European Wildcat totally explained
The
European Wildcat (
Felis silvestris silvestris) is a subspecies of the
wildcat, that inhabits forests of
Western,
Central and
Eastern Europe, as well as in
Scotland and
Turkey; it has been
extirpated from
Scandinavia,
Iceland,
England,
Wales, and
Ireland. Its physical appearance is much bulkier than that of the
African Wildcat and the
Domestic Cat. The thick fur and size are distinguishing traits; the Wildcat normally wouldn't be mistaken for the Domestic Cat, although in practice it's less clear whether the two are correctly distinguished (one study showed an error rate of 39%). In contrast to the Domestic Cat, it's most active in the daytime.
Wildcats were common in the European
Pleistocene era; when the ice vanished, they became adapted to a life in dense forests. In most European countries they've become very rare. Although legally protected, they're still shot by hunters mistaking them for domestic cats. In Scotland, interbreeding with
feral cats is also a threat to the wild population. It isn't known to what extent the interbreeding has affected or replaced the wild population, or indeed whether there are any "pure" Wildcats left at all. Still others have suggested that since both species happily interbreed, and since hybrid domestic cats speedily revert to wild type (tabby or melanistic and large in size) the exact genetic purity of the cat is less important than its existence in the ecosystem.
Two forms coexisted in large numbers in the
Iberian Peninsula: the common European form, north of the
Douro and
Ebro rivers, and the giant Iberian form, previously considered a different subspecies
F. s. tartessia, in the rest of the territory. The last is one of the heaviest subspecies of
Felis silvestris; In his book
Pleistocene Mammals of Europe (
1963),
palaeontologist Dr.
Björn Kurtén noted that this subspecies conserves the same size of the form that lived in all Europe during the Pleistocene. Although
Spain and
Portugal are the West European countries with the greatest population of wild cats, the animals in these region are threatened by breeding with
feral cats and loss of habitat.
The easternmost populations, in
Ukraine,
Moldova, and the
Caucasus, have low levels of domestic cat hybridization.
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