Rare videos of five Chinese desert cats were captured in NW China
CGTN
00:45

Infrared cameras have captured rare videos of five Chinese desert cats frolicking and wrestling together in Northwest China's Qinghai Province.

The Chinese desert cat, also known as the Chinese mountain cat, is a wild cat endemic to western China and is under second-class state protection. Solitary by nature and small in number, desert cats are sparsely distributed throughout the region.

The videos were captured on July 3 for a research project on desert cats jointly carried out by the Qinghai Provincial Administration of the Qilian Mountain National Park and Peking University, which showed a female desert cat and her four boisterous kittens together in the wild.

Since the special research project was launched, various precious images of the rarely-seen felines have been captured.

As the only endemic species of cat in China, the Chinese desert cat is also classified as a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

(Cover image via VCG)

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