Marble cat, Sumatran tiger, leopard, clouded leopard, or black-footed cat. They all have one thing in common: they are threatened with extinction, at least in the wild. Since the dawn of civilization, they have been revered and persecuted, exterminated and idolized. But it is only with European expansion and globalization that their natural habitats around the world are being irretrievably destroyed at an ever-increasing rate. “Rotbart’s Wild Relatives” is a cultural-historical journey from early times through the 17th century, when the process of globalization was already in full swing, to modern times and the current challenges facing species and habitat conservation in the face of the so-called Sixth Extinction, the sixth mass extinction in the history of the Earth. Readers are immersed in a world of divine rulers, cultural heroes, man-eating big cats, unscrupulous profiteers, historical extermination campaigns, and trigger-happy naturalists. For the cultural history of anthropogenic species extinction is marked by greed and obsession with power, scientific passion, religious convictions, and a good dose of stupidity on the part of the animal species that, in its hubris, calls itself Homo sapiens, i.e., wise and rational.