The caracal can leap three metres and snatch a bird out of the air
A sandy wild cat with long black ear tufts, the caracal can spring more than three metres straight up and twist in mid-air to catch a bird in flight. Its name comes from a Turkish phrase for black ear, and the lynx of ancient Greece and Rome was probably this cat.
Caracals range across Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and dry parts of Pakistan and northwest India, favouring arid country with some cover but reaching 3,000 metres in the Ethiopian Highlands. They stand around 40 to 50 centimetres at the shoulder and weigh up to about 19 kilograms, with males usually larger. The coat is a plain reddish tan, without the spots of true lynxes, which are a separate genus despite the old nicknames desert lynx and Persian lynx. Their closest relatives are the African golden cat and the serval.
The face is striking: black ear tufts about four and a half centimetres long, dark lines running from forehead to nose, and white patches around the eyes and mouth. The upper eyelids droop slightly, probably shielding the eyes from glare. Caracals seem to use these markings to signal, flicking their heads so the tufts twitch rapidly. Their hind legs are longer than the front ones, giving the body a downward slope from the rump and powering those famous jumps.
Secretive and mostly nocturnal, caracals tend to stop moving once the air rises above about 20 degrees Celsius. They live alone or in pairs and mark large territories; males in Saudi Arabia can range over more than a thousand square kilometres. Small mammals make up at least four fifths of the diet, but a caracal can bring down animals two or three times its own size, such as young antelope. It stalks to within about five metres before sprinting. In one South African penguin colony, caracals caused roughly 11 per cent of deaths over two decades.
Females can breed year-round and bear up to six kittens after two or three months. Some populations are precarious: India may have fewer than 100, and in 2019 a camera trap in Abu Dhabi recorded the first caracal there since the mid-1980s.
Source: Caracal
