Re: What African felines are extinct

Hello John,

I've done my best with this one but I'm not certain that this is totally correct! The only one I'm certain of is the Sabre tooth tiger (Meganthereon) which died out some 4000 years ago. However, after a somewhat fruitless search on the net I went home and checked out some books, the one I would recommend on this sort of thing for a general overview is Extinct Species of the World by Jean-Christophe Balouet, et al / Published 1990. This book talks about two species (or subspecies) of lions from Africa, the Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) and the Cape lion (Panthera leo
melanochaitus) which are believed to have become extinct in 1922 and 1865 respectively. At this point my search became a little more interesting as back on the net I have found that they may not be so extinct after all, which is great news! The site to check out is http://www.aristotle.net/~swarmack/nslions.html where there is a whole load of stuff about these guys and how some were saved from extinction, as detailed below, taken from the above link:

""A couple of years ago, Dr. Hym Ebedes of the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute in South Africa was
checking out a zoo in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia when he stumbled across eleven lions that fit the
description of either the Cape or the Barbary Lions. They had the huge manes and the heavy bodies of
either species. It turns out that the cats are descendants of a group kept by Emperor Haile Selassie at
the royal palace in Addis before his regime was toppled by a 1974 coup. Selassie called his dynasty the
"Lions of Ethiopia" and kept them around as symbols of power. With his overthrow, the zoo got the
lions.""

There are now attempts to breed the Barbary lion as reported on 26 August, 1998 in: http://wildnetafrica.co.za/bushcraft/dailynews/1998archive_3/archive_19980826_barbarylion.html

I'm afraid I have been able to find little else so I would conclude that the only extinct feline species from Africa is the Sabre tooth tiger. A good site for details on the conservation of felines in general is http://www.cathouse-fcc.org/ and if you get in touch with them they may be able to give you some more information.

Cheers