Sunday, July 13, 2014

African Golden Cat

The African Golden Cat is an endangered species who mostly find it's habitat in tropical forests where it is very dense. It is a reddish/brown color, or grey, with a possibility of having spots, it is also about twice the size of an average house cat. The African Golden Cat tends to live towards the middle of Africa.
 
The African Golden Cat is an endangered species due to deforestation and habitat loss due to human's selfish needs for wood and to build houses and have so many appliances. Since they are losing so many species because of habitat loss, it is hard to keep up and keep their numbers up because they are pregnant with their offspring for approximately 75 days and they can only have one or two offspring at time. 

 
This animal is truly amazing, and has such a broad niche because they can practically live anywhere in Africa, as long as they're is water. So you might ask, how is this animal important to our environment? There is a thing called a food chain, so if one animal dies off then it affects tons of other animals and causes a chain reaction. For example, if the African Golden Cat dies then the animals that feed off of them may die off because there is a limited amount of food for them. Also the animals that the African Golden Cat feeds off of then those animals could become overpopulated because they are not being weaved out. If we do not care and try to do something, this creature could be gone forever.
Some conservation efforts that are being done today are that other countries should be monitoring the animal to make sure it survives and the hunting of the animal is illegal in 12 countries. There is not that much that people can do except make other people aware of the situation and try to get them to stop cutting down our forests and taking away animal's habitats because it does not seem fair to them.
To view more conservation acts you can view: www.wildcatconservation.org or www.catsurvivaltrust.org


No comments:

Post a Comment