An "incredibly rare and elusive" cheetah has been photographed using camera traps in the Algerian Sahara by scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
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 first camera-trap photographs of the cheetah, taken as part of a systematic survey of 1,750 square miles of the central Sahara, are providing scientists with information on population numbers, movement and how it interacts with its environment.
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.
