Shining a spotlight on the wide-roaming sand cat ‘king of the desert’

The sand cat’s exceptional hearing helps the species hunt in the desert at night. Here, a sand cat was caught on camera with a meal clutched in its mouth.

The sand cat is small, elusive and adapted to life in some of Earth’s most inhospitable deserts — that makes it hard to study and conserve, with lots of unknowns about its behaviors and populations across its range.