It’s not every day that a YouTube video triggers a major wildlife discovery, yet that’s exactly what Mohammed Almuntasir unknowingly did when he hit upload in 2017.
Clocking in at just 18 seconds, the clip showed a fun-sized feline curling up under the shade of a desert shrub in the photographer’s native Libya. Almost a decade later, it was confirmed as the first documented evidence that the North African country was home to the sand cat, a wild felid that is as elusive as it is adorable.
A longtime field photographer of plants and animals across the North African country, it was not that Almuntasir had not realized what he was looking at. He had seen sand cats in Libya previously, but their nocturnal nature had foiled his attempts to capture footage.
“As soon as I saw the animal, I knew it was a sand cat because I had seen the species before at night,” Almuntasir told CNN via email.
“However, I had never been able to photograph it because I did not have a camera suitable for night photography, or camera traps.”
