page_title: Asiatic wildcat
section_title: Taxonomy
hierarchical_section_title: Asiatic wildcat / Taxonomy
caption_attribution_description: English&#x3a;&#32; «&#160;Felis ornata&#160;» = Felis silvestris ornata (Asiatic Wildcat)Français&#x202f;&#x3a;&#32; «&#160;Felis ornata&#160;» = Felis silvestris ornata (Chat orné)
context_page_description: The Asiatic wildcat is an African wildcat subspecies that occurs from the eastern Caspian Sea north to Kazakhstan, into western India, western China and southern Mongolia. It is also known as the Asian steppe wildcat and Indian desert cat.
  The status Least Concern in the IUCN Red List is attributed to the wildcat species complex. There is no information on current status or population numbers for the Asiatic wildcat's entire range, but populations are thought to be declining.
context_section_description: Felis ornata was the scientific name used by John Edward Gray in the early 1830s as caption to an illustration of an Indian wildcat drawn by Thomas Hardwicke. In subsequent years, several naturalists described spotted wildcat zoological specimens from Asian range countries and proposed names, including:
  Chaus caudatus by Gray in 1874 was a skin and skull from the Bukhara Region in Uzbekistan.
  Felis shawiana by William Thomas Blanford in 1876 was a pale wildcat skin from Yarkand in Xinjiang, western China.
  Felis (Felis) kozlovi by Konstantin Satunin in 1904 was a wildcat skin from an oasis in the Turpan Depression in western China.
  Felis (Felis) murgabensis and Felis (Felis) matschiei by Ludwig Zukowsky in 1914 were wildcat skins and skulls from the Murghab River in Afghanistan and Geok Tepe in Turkmenistan, respectively.
  Felis ornata nesterovi by Alexei Birulya in 1916 was a female wildcat skin from Lower Mesopotamia.
  Felis ornata issikulensis by Sergey Ognev in 1930 was a skin and skull of a male wildcat from the southwestern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan.
  In the 1940s, Reginald Innes Pocock reviewed the collection of wildcat skins and skulls in the Natural History Museum, London and subordinated all the spotted wildcat specimens to Felis lybica, arguing that size of skulls and teeth do not differ from those from African range countries.
caption: Illlustration of an Indian wildcat by Thomas Hardwicke, 1829
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