Talk:Corsican wildcat

Redirect to "Feral cat"

BhagyaMani, please don't redirect a page without discussion first. While this is no longer a subspecies, it is also not a population of feral house cats. The cat specialist group gives the African wildcat's range as including Corsica, so I put in some info and ref'd it.

While there might be extra wildcat pages, the situation is a) not so out of hand as the lion subpage situation; and b) the wildcat pages as a whole could use some work. Removing some potentially useful info from here isn't helpful, but if you wish to expand the articles about actual wildcat species & subspecies, I'd be glad to help. An addition to the Taxonomy section of African wildcat, and a brief paragraph or so about a population of said wildcat on Corsica, would probably serve to replace this article. Cheers, --SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:12, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I read several articles about wild cats in Corsica : several authors came to the conclusion that wild cats in Corsica were introduced. See this section in Feral_cat#History. The scientific name that was attributed initially to the wild cat in Corsica is not considered valid any longer. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 15:52, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but it is an introduced population of African wildcats, not domestic cats, according to the IUCN Cat Taskforce paper. So it should be noted on the African wildcat page, not Feral cat (which is about feral domestic cats, IIRC). Same goes for the Cretan wildcat. And personally, I think that F. s. jordansi being a domestic cat population should be noted on the European wildcat page; it seems more pertinent than being on Feral cat. Cheers, --SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:04, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Doubtful is that these introduced cats were *wild-caught* African wildcats. At the turn of the 1st millenium, i.e. about 2,000 years ago, the Romans gradually lifted the ban in Egypt for export of domesticated cats -- see Cats in Egypt#History -- and took cats along to all other countries and regions where they had any kind of dependencies and commercial relationships. So rather unlikely that they caught African wildcats, when there were so many domesticated ones in Egypt at the time. And it's well established meanwhile that the domestic cat descended from African wildcat. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 16:18, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but the IUCN says they're African wildcats, and we follow to the IUCN. Besides, it is more relevant to put that info on the African wildcat page, rather than Feral cat (there aren't really any studies done that treat them as feral cat populations). Cheers, --SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:23, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

In regards to IUCN RL account, you are mistaken, or perhaps did not read this in detail : "... populations on other islands (including Sardinia and Corsica) are probably feral domestics stemming from Neolithic times (Gippoliti and Amori 2006)". -- BhagyaMani (talk) 16:29, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was "No consensus". Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:15, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

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As mentioned in above section : the IUCN Red List assessors for Felis silvestris stated already in 2015 that the cat "... populations on other islands (including Sardinia and Corsica) are probably feral domestics. As the Corsican wildcat is not regarded a valid taxon any more, this page should be redirected to Feral cat where I already added ref'ed content into the History section. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 08:19, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

The Corsican wildcat is a distinct population of cats, regardless of whether wildcat or feral cat. The question is whether it is notable enough to keep as a separate article. I think the animal has been studied enough to pass notability, but given the current limited extent of the article I'd lean towards merge. The question is where? The redlist assessment says probably feral cats from neolithic times, but elsewhere (MSW3, the SCG) it is treated as an African wildcat. Given this uncertainty I oppose a move for now. We've seen far too much premature merging and splitting of cat articles before any consensus is reached. If the article is extended (the redlist gives four references on origins) then it might merit retention, as is the case for the Scottish wildcat which has a high quality article.   Jts1882 | talk  09:22, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your opinion, Jts1882. Several years ago already, I had added the info about possible origin of wild cats in Sardinia and Corsica to the African wildcat page, and recently revised this text and edited refs slightly. In regards to MSW3 : you and me know that Wozencraft did not analyse any museum specimens himself, but relied solely on reviewing available literature, which for this cat consists fore-foremost of Pocock (1951)'s posthumously published book. But other than Pocock's studies of skins and skulls, I'm not aware of any publication on field research in Corsica by French scientists. Are you? -- BhagyaMani (talk) 09:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

PS: in contrary, French biologists have been working on European wildcat in the Ardennes and Pyrenees since at least the 1970s. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 09:54, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New animal species found in Corsica

I think this news article might be of interest --Melly42 (talk) 09:14, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

The fake news part of this article is that this cat is a new species. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 17:55, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Okay, so it is a hoax. Interesting is that even the French newspaper L’Express fell for the scam. here --Melly42 (talk) 13:04, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

And another evidence that newspapers are not WP:RSes!! -- BhagyaMani (talk) 14:16, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

New species after all?

https://phys.org/news/2023-03-mysterious-corsican-cat-fox-revealed-unique.html AmigoNico (talk) 05:00, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

This text is very similar and same photo as in article published a few years ago; seems like republished. – BhagyaMani (talk) 06:06, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Check the article- an actual scientific paper was published this year (here) stating that the Corsican wildcat was not a population of European wildcat or domestic cat, based on genetic tests. So it might be a new species after all. SilverTiger12 (talk) 13:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! Looks like quite a muddle to me now. As European and African wildcats are considered distinct species, but these authors referred to both AND the domestic cat as subspecies of F. silvestris. – BhagyaMani (talk) 13:59, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Yep! It's very exciting- I wouldn't be surprised by a new cat species from South America, but this is one in Corsica- not exactly a hard place to reach and explore. Anyway, there's no definitive yes or no yet, just that it isn't a feral cat population (which makes the taxobox wrong...). I can't access the full scientific paper, but I'll see if I can expand the article here using the news article. SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:33, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Did you check whether available at sci-hub.mksa ? – BhagyaMani (talk) 18:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Just did, and no it doesn't have the article. Alas. SilverTiger12 (talk) 19:24, 17 March 2023 (UTC)