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Bahaa-el-din, L.; Mills, D.
The Phantom Feline Revisited
2013 Swara: 59-62
Ten years ago, Gordon Boy introduced the African golden cat (_Profelis aurata_) to SWARA readers as the "Phantom Feline". Information was thin on the ground at the time and Boy had to gather bits of the jigsaw from scattered sources. Fleeting sightings and a few skins made up the bulk of knowledge and we were left to fill the gaps through guesswork. Our unfamiliarity with the golden cat is not surprising - it lives in forested habitat, a difficult environment in which to see wildlife, and seems adept at avoiding human encounters. These traits may previously have benefited golden cats, keeping them out of the way of harmful human attention. Nevertheless, our ignorance of the species may now bear a cost: during our current time of booming human population and associated deforestation and bushmeat hunting, we have little idea of how the forest-dependent African golden cat is coping. Remotely triggered camera traps were slowly coming into use in Africa's forests when Boy wrote his article, yet few images of the golden cat had been obtained.
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