Video: Three Rare Baby Sand Cats Born in Israeli Zoo
Sand cat Rotem and her three kittens at the Ramat Gan Safari Park, Israel, August 18. Rotem gave birth to her cubs three weeks ago.Sand cat Rotem and her three kittens at the Ramat Gan Safari Park, Israel, August 18. Rotem gave birth to her cubs three weeks ago.Baz Ratner/Reuters
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Before joining Newsweek, Lucy Westcott was an editorial fellow at The Wire. Previously a United Nations correspondent for the Inter Press Service, she has also written for the Guardian, Bustle, American Journalism Review, and the Capital News Service, and interned at the BBC’s Washington bureau. Lucy received her Masters of Journalism degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, and got her start in journalism writing copy for a police station. She was born and raised in Swindon, U.K.
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Three baby sand cats, a rare breed of endangered wildcat, have been born in an Israeli zoo.
Rotem, a sand cat from Germany, gave birth to her kittens three weeks ago at the Ramat Gan Safari Park, outside of Tel Aviv.
Indigenous to Jordan and Israel, sand cats, which are small and particularly fluffy even as adults, are the only cats primarily found in true desert environments. Sand cats were found in the Sahara Desert and parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, according to the International Society for Endangered Cats, but today mostly exist in captivity. The gestation period for a sand cat is generally two months.
Rotem and her three kittens at the Ramat Gan Safari Park, Israel, August 18.Rotem and her three kittens at the Ramat Gan Safari Park, Israel, August 18.Baz Ratner/Reuters
A video published on Tuesday shows Rotem taking care of her kittens to the sound of excited zoo visitors in the background.
While zookeepers knew Rotem was pregnant, they didn't know the exact date when she'd give birth, The Times of Israel reports. After Rotem's partner from Poland, Sela, died last year, a Swedish-born partner, Kalahari, was brought in to be Rotem's companion. The pair were initially disinterested in each other but were left alone together unobserved, Haaretz reports. Workers at the zoo didn't know for a period if they had mated for not.
Three sand kittens peek out of their den in the Ramat Gan Safari Park, Israel, August 18.Three sand kittens peek out of their den in the Ramat Gan Safari Park, Israel, August 18.Baz Ratner/Reuters
Zookeepers were worried at the lack of attraction, but as Haaretz said: "Maybe [Kalahari] put a bag on his furry head."
