Felis

Felis is a genus of small and medium-sized cat species native to most of Africa and south of 60° latitude in Europe and Asia to Indochina. The genus includes the domestic cat. The smallest Felis species is the black-footed cat with a head and body length from 38 to 42 cm (15 to 17 in). The largest is the jungle cat with a head and body length from 62 to 76 cm (24 to 30 in).

Genetic studies indicate that the Felinae genera Felis, Otocolobus and Prionailurus diverged from a Eurasian progenitor of the Felidae about 6.2 million years ago, and that Felis species split off 3.04 to 0.99 million years ago.

Etymology

The generic name Felis is de­rived from Clas­si­cal Latin fēlis mean­ing "cat, ferret".

Taxonomy

Carl Lin­naeus con­sid­ered Felis to com­prise all cat species known until 1758. Later tax­on­o­mists split the cat fam­ily into dif­fer­ent gen­era. In 1917, the British zo­ol­o­gist Regi­nald Innes Pocock re­vised the genus Felis as com­pris­ing only the ones listed in the fol­low­ing table. Es­ti­mated ge­netic di­ver­gence times of the listed species are in­di­cated in mil­lion years ago (Mya), based on analy­sis of au­to­so­mal, xDNA, yDNA and mtDNA gene segments.

Pocock ac­cepted the Pal­las's cat as the only mem­ber of the genus Oto­colobus. Other sci­en­tists con­sider it also a Felis species.

Sev­eral sci­en­tists con­sider the Chi­nese moun­tain cat a sub­species of F. silvestris.

A black cat from Tran­scau­ca­sia de­scribed in 1904 as F. daemon by Sat­unin turned out to be a feral cat, prob­a­bly a hy­brid of wild­cat and do­mes­tic cat. The Kel­las cat is a hy­brid be­tween do­mes­tic cat and Eu­ro­pean wild­cat oc­cur­ring in Scot­land.

The Cor­si­can wild­cat is con­sid­ered to have been in­tro­duced to Cor­sica be­fore the be­gin­ning of the 1st millennium. A ge­netic study of a dozen in­di­vid­u­als showed that they are closely re­lated to the African wild­cat orig­i­nat­ing in the Mid­dle East.

Fossil Felis species

Fos­sil Felis species in­clude:

• Felis attica (Wagner, 1857)
• Felis lunensis (Martelli, 1906)

Characteristics

Felis species have high and wide skulls, short jaws and nar­row ears with short tufts, but with­out any white spots on the back of the ears. Their pupils con­tract to a ver­ti­cal slit.