Felis lybica was the scientific name proposed in 1780 by Georg Forster who based his description on a specimen from Gafsa on the Barbary Coast that had the size of a domestic cat, but a reddish fur, short black tufts on the ears, and a ringed tail.

[3] Between the late 18th and 20th centuries, several naturalists and curators of natural history museums described and proposed new names for wildcat holotypes from Africa and the Near East, including: Since 2017, three African wildcat subspecies are recognised as valid taxa:[16] Phylogenetic analysis of the nuclear DNA in tissue samples from all Felidae species revealed that the evolutionary radiation of the Felidae began in Asia in the Miocene around 14.45 to 8.38 million years ago.

[19] The African wildcat is part of an evolutionary lineage that is estimated to have genetically diverged from the common ancestor of the Felis species around 2.16 to 0.89 million years ago, based on analysis of their nuclear DNA.

[20] In Cyprus, an African wildcat was found in a burial site next to a human skeleton in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlement Shillourokambos.

The graves are estimated to have been established by Neolithic farmers about 9,500 years ago, and are the earliest known evidence for a close association between a cat and a human.

[26] The African wildcat occurs throughout Africa, as well as in the Middle East including parts of the Arabian Peninsula and most of Iran.

Its range extends northeast into Central Asia, where it occurs along the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, and through Kazakhstan to as far east as Xinjiang.

In deserts such as the Sahara, it occurs at much lower densities and is most common in areas with rugged terrain such as the Hoggar Mountains.

It inhabits every country of East and Southern Africa, although it is absent from the dense tropical rainforests of the Congo Basin.

[2] The wild cat in Sardinia and Corsica was long considered to be an African wildcat subspecies with the scientific name Felis lybica sarda.

[33] In West Africa, the African wildcat preys on rats, mice, gerbils, hares, small to medium-sized birds, including francolins, and lizards.

[24] In Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, it preys foremost on murids, to a lesser extent also on birds, small reptiles and invertebrates.

A documentary by the BBC describes the details of the experiments that led to this discovery, and also shows a mature wildcat that was born by a surrogate female.

[36] The Libyan Posts issued a postage stamp dedicated to the African wildcat in November 1997 in cooperation with World Wide Fund for Nature.