One of the world’s most elusive cats has finally been photographed after a year-long search by conservationists.

The Saharan cheetah was captured in a series of murky images taken by a night-time camera trap in the deserts of Termit, Niger.

Less than ten of the cats are thought to exist there and almost nothing is known about them except for their ability to survive without a permanent source of water in extremely high temperatures.

Scientists working for the Saharan Conservation Fund (SCF) last week released one of the photographs of the Saharan cheetah taken between July and August this year.

Turning towards the camera, the sleek, pale cat has a long tail and appears to have spots on its back.

Dr John Newby, CEO of the SCF project, said: ‘I think we were more happy than surprised when the images turned up, because we knew cheetahs were in the general area because we had seen their tracks on several occasions.

‘However, the area is so vast that picking up an animal as rare as this always entails a lot of luck and good judgement on where to place the cameras.’

SCF scientists concentrated their efforts on the wildlife refuges of Termit Massif and the neighbouring Tin Toumma desert.

Although conservationists have been working in the area for the last ten years, the Saharan cheetah has only been spotted three times and never photographed there, until now.

The Saharan cheetah rarely ventures out in the day. Scientists believe its nocturnal habits are down to conserving energy by staying out of the heat.

It appears to have different colour and spot patterns to the more common cheetahs that live in other parts of Africa.

SCF’s Dr Thomas Rabeil told the BBC: ‘The cheetahs of Termit Massif are extremely shy, rarely revealing themselves to researchers and few visitors go there.

‘Very little is known about the behavioural differences between the two cheetahs, as they have never been studied in the wild.

‘From observations of tracks and anecdotal reports they seem to be highly adaptable and able to eke out an existence in the Termit and Tin Toumma desert.’

There are thought to be less than 250 adult Northwest African or Saharan cheetahs, making the subspecies critically endangered, but very little is known about the cat.

The cheetah is found across the Sahara desert and savannah of north and west Africa in small, fragmented populations, the biggest of which is thought to be in Algeria.

Last year, scientists using camera traps in the Algerian Sahara caught a close-up image of a Saharan cheetah in the Algerian Sahara.

That image provided photographic confirmation of the presence of sand cats in the region, where more than 50 are thought to live – compared to ten or less in Niger.

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