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How pure are our remaining Scottish wildcats?

Funding for this project has now finished

The problem with hybridisation

The most serious threat to wildcats in the UK is interbreeding (or hybridization) with domestic and feral cats. There may only be as few as 400 true, genetically distinct wildcats left in Scotland. Interbreeding further reduces their numbers as the genes become mixed with other cat species. But exactly how hybridisation affects wildcats isn’t completely clear. We need a much a better understanding of the extent and impact of interbreeding to stand a chance of saving them.

Bolstering the natural population

The solution lies in unraveling the entire genetic code of wildcats, feral and domestic cats to understand the detailed differences and chart the history and extent of the interbreeding. Once we’ve done that, we’ll be able to tell how many true wildcats are left in the wild and whether they can be used to bolster the natural population through a captive breeding programme led by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

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