Thursday May 19 , 2022
I've Been Thinking:

Sand Cats, also known as Sand Dune Cats, are an endangered species.

The Ramat Gan Safari had two Sand Cats - one male and the other a female. One feline came from France and the other from Sweden. The two-year old female just delivered 5 kittens.

According to the Safari staff, at first, the Europeans did not seem to get along. But as time went by they got closer, grew fond of each other and eventually mated.

All five of the newborn Sand Cats in the litter have survived. Often, only two kittens survive - so this is an exception. The mother is very protective of her newborns and barely lets the father come close.

There are less than 10,000 of these endangered cats in the wild and only 178 in zoos across the world. At one time there were Sand Cats in Israel, but with time they came extinct in the region. Now several zoos, like the Ramat Gan Safari, are taking part in efforts to boost the species' reproduction rate and to bring more Sand Cats to the world.

The Israeli-born kittens will eventually be transferred to zoos in Europe where they will, hopefully, continue to help the species' population increase.

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