page_title: Sardinia
section_title: Fauna
hierarchical_section_title: Sardinia / Environment / Fauna
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Gatto selvatico sardo nel bosco costiero mediterraneo English: Sardinian wild cat in its environment, Mediterranean coastal forest Deutsch: Sardische Wildkatze in seiner Umgebung, Mittelmeer-Küstenwald
context_page_description: Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and immediately south of the French island of Corsica.
  It is one of the five Italian regions that have been granted some degree of domestic autonomy by special statute. Its official name is Regione Autonoma della Sardegna. It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city. The capital of the region of Sardinia — and its largest city — is Cagliari. Sardinia's indigenous language and the other minority languages spoken on the island are officially recognized by the regional law as having "equal dignity" with Italian.
  Sardinia has been inhabited since the Paleolithic. The island's most iconic civilization is the indigenous Nuragic, which flourished from the 18th century BC to either 238 BC or the 2nd century AD in some parts of the island, and to the 6th century AD in that part of the island known as Barbagia.
context_section_description: Sardinia is home to a wide variety of rare or uncommon animals,  such as several species of mammals, many of them belonging to an endemic subspecies: the Mediterranean monk seal, Sarcidano horse, Giara horse, albino donkey, Sardinian feral cat, mouflon, Sardinian long-eared bat, Sardinian deer, fallow deer, Sardinian fox (Vulpes vulpes ichnusae), Sardinian hare (Lepus capensis mediterraneus), wild boar (Sus scrofa meridionalis), edible dormouse and European pine marten.
  Rare amphibians, found only on the island, are the Sardinian brook salamander, brown cave salamander, imperial cave salamander, Monte Albo cave salamander, Supramonte cave salamander and Sarrabus cave salamander (Speleomantes sarrabusensis); the Sardinian tree frog is also found in Corsica and in the Tuscan Archipelago. Among reptiles worthy of note are Bedriaga's rock lizard, the Tyrrhenian wall lizard and Fitzinger's algyroides, endemic species of Sardinia and Corsica. The island is inhabited by terrestrial tortoises and sea turtles like Hermann's tortoise, the spur-thighed tortoise, marginated tortoise (Testudo marginata sarda), Nabeul tortoise, loggerhead sea turtle and green sea turtle. A new arachnid species, endemic to the island, has been recently found: the Nuragic spider.
  Sardinia has four endemic subspecies of birds found nowhere else in the world: its great spotted woodpecker (ssp harterti), great tit (ssp ecki), common chaffinch (ssp sarda), and Eurasian jay (ssp ichnusae). It also shares a further 10 endemic subspecies of bird with Corsica. In some cases Sardinia is a delimited part of the species range. For example, the subspecies of hooded crow, Corvus cornix ssp cornix occurs in Sardinia and Corsica, but no further south.
  Some birds of prey found here are the griffon vulture, common buzzard, golden eagle, long-eared owl, western marsh harrier, peregrine falcon, European honey buzzard, Sardinian goshawk (Accipiter gentilis arrigonii), Bonelli's eagle and Eleonora's falcon, whose name comes from Eleonor of Arborea, national heroine of Sardinia, expert in falconry.
  The hundreds of lagoons and coastal lakes that dot the island are home for many species of wading birds, such as the greater flamingo.
  Conversely, Sardinia lacks many species common on the European continent, such as the viper, wolf, bear and marmot.
  The island has also long been used for grazing flocks of indigenous Sardinian sheep.  The Sardinian Anglo-Arab is a horse breed that was established in Sardinia, where it has been selectively bred for more than one hundred years.
  Three different breeds of dogs are peculiar to Sardinia: the Pastore Fonnese, Dogo Sardo and Levriero Sardo.
caption: The Sardinian feral cat, long considered a subspecies of the African wildcat, are descended from domesticated cats[216]
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