Just watched Animal Planet last night.
It was fascinating.
It depuicted the desert life (I don’t know which desert) and showed an animal called a feneq? if thats how you spell it. Cute little thing with big ears.
How come I’ve never heard of it?
Did it evolve recently?
And how can cats live in the desert? Theres not enough water?
Thank you very much.
That’s “fennec”, Vulpes zerda, and it’s a fox, i.e. a dog not a cat.
I think you mean the fennec fox, which as it’s name suggests is not a cat.
Oops, beaten to it.
Apparently these’s some dispute about the taxonomic name of the fennec (some references call it Fenecus zerda). The desert will have been the Sahara. It gets all the moisture it needs from its food.
I saw the same show. I was fasinated with the fennec but there was another animal that looked just like a cat. I was thinking they called it a desert cat but I can’t find anything about it. He looked just like an orange tabby.
I, too, was wondering how in the world a cat could survive in the desert.
There are at least three cats called the Desert Cat. If it was in the same programme as the fennec then it was probably the African Desert Cat, Felis lybica lybica, and as this article explains its range is mostly outside the great desert areas. Within the deserts it must also gain most of its liquid intake from its food.
The other two I’m aware of are the Chinese Desert Cat, Felis bieti and the Asiatic Desert Cat, Felis lybica ornata. I’m not a naturalist, though, so maybe someone else will bring more technical knowledge to this thread.
Thank you.
Yes, it was an orange tabby.
So, I take it there a lots of different kinds of foxes, which is why I hadn’t heard the name before.
Cute little thing.
Yes, there are lots of foxes. Further south in Africa, for instance, they have the Bat-Eared Fox and there are links to a few more at the foot of that page.