Felis nigripes

The black-footed cat (Felis nigripes), also called small-spotted cat, is the smallest African cat and endemic to the southwestern arid zone of Southern Africa. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 2002, as the population is suspected to be declining due to bushmeat poaching of prey species, persecution, traffic accidents and predation by domestic animals. Felis nigripes was the scientific name proposed by William John Burchell in 1824 who described cat skins used by ethnic people for making cloaks.Felis (Microfelis) nigripes thomasi was proposed as a subspecies by Guy C. Shortridge in 1931 who described skins collected in Griqualand West as being darker.The existence of subspecies was questioned, as no geographical or ecological barriers between populations exist. Today, the black-footed cat is considered a monotypic species. The following cladogram shows the phylogenetic relationships of black-footed cat and other species within the Felis lineage. The black-footed cat is the smallest wild cat in Africa and rivals the rusty-spotted cat as the world's smallest wild cat. Males reach a head-to-body length of 36.7 to 43.3 cm (14.4 to 17.0 in) with tails 16.4 to 19.8 cm (6.5 to 7.8 in) long. Females are smaller with a maximum head-to-body-length of 36.9 cm (14.5 in) and tails 12.6 to 17.0 cm (5.0 to 6.7 in) long.Adult resident males weigh on average 1.9 kg (4.2 lb) and a maximum of 2.45 kg (5.4 lb). Adult resident females weigh on average 1.3 kg (2.9 lb) and a maximum of 1.65 kg (3.6 lb).The shoulder height is about 25 cm (9.8 in). Despite its name, only the pads and underparts of the cat's feet are black. The cat has a stocky build with rounded ears, large eyes, and short black-tipped tail. The fur varies in color from cinnamon-buff to tawny, and is patterned with black or brown spots that merge to form rings on the legs, neck, and tail. These patterns provide the animals with camouflage; the backs of their ears, however, are the same color as the background color of their fur. They have six mammae, and unlike other spotted cats, non-pigmented skin. The black-footed cat is endemic to southern Africa, and primarily found in South Africa, Namibia, marginally into Zimbabwe, and likely in extreme southern Angola. Only historical but no recent records exist in Botswana. It lives in dry, open savanna, grassland and Karoo semidesert with shrub and tree cover at altitudes up to 2,000 m (6,600 ft), but not in the driest and sandiest parts of the Namib and Kalahari Deserts. During the night, they need sparse shrub and tree covers to hunt but spend the daytime in burrows or empty termite mounds. Black-footed cats are solitary and strictly nocturnal animals, thus rarely seen. They spend the day resting in dense cover in unoccupied burrows of springhares, porcupines, and aardvarks, or in hollow termite mounds. They emerge to hunt after sunset.