Wednesday 25 March 2020

ARTICLE: The True Story of Madagascar's 'Forest Cat'

On the island of Madagascar, evolution has worked overtime assembling a menagerie like no other on Earth. That makes any interloper’s history all the more germane.

Take the resident non-native “forest cat,” for example—an animal whose origins have been the subject of much debate. Many scientists have long thought the feline’s ancestors were small wildcats that somehow reached Madagascar from mainland Africa. Others posited that Felis catus, the domestic cat, was also part of the gene pool (though historical and ethnographic data suggest that domestic cats didn’t arrive here until the 1800s—with a U.K. ambassador—after the forest cat was already established on the island nation).

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