{"id":2191638,"date":"2026-07-03T18:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=2191638"},"modified":"2026-07-11T21:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T19:49:14","slug":"no-one-believed-it-how-a-youtube-video-accidentally-proved-libyas-sand-cat-really-does-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/test-platform5\/no-one-believed-it-how-a-youtube-video-accidentally-proved-libyas-sand-cat-really-does-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018No one believed it\u2019: how a YouTube video accidentally proved Libya\u2019s sand cat really does exist"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span>hen wildlife photographer Mohammed Almuntasir uploaded 18 seconds of\u00a0footage to YouTube, he thought little more about the small, pale cat seen digging a hollow in the sand in the remote dunes of south-west Libya.<\/p>\n

The video, however, posted in 2017, turned out to be the first material evidence that the\u00a0sand cat\u00a0(Felis margarita<\/em>), the world\u2019s only felid adapted to true desert conditions, existed in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I posted it, nobody believed it had been filmed in\u00a0Li<\/a>bya<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone denied it, but I kept insisting that the cat is here, in several places; one of them was only 70km (43 miles) from Zintan, where I live.\u201d<\/p>\n

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