Canada lynx

Name and taxonomy

Robert Kerr described the species in 1792 from a lynx taken in Canada, under the name Felis lynx canadensis. Later authors moved it into the genus Lynx, and Gerrit Miller backed that placement in 1912. For decades scientists argued over whether Lynx was a genus of its own or a part of Felis. In 2005 Wallace Christopher Wozencraft listed it as a full species beside the bobcat, the Eurasian lynx and the Iberian lynx. Wozencraft also named three subspecies: one on the Canadian mainland, one in Newfoundland and one in Alaska.

A 1975 study found that Newfoundland animals differ only in a darker coat, so the subspecies are doubtful. In 2017 the Cat Specialist Group treated the Canada lynx as a single species with no subspecies. The Newfoundland population probably split from the mainland about 20,000 to 33,000 years ago, after the last ice age. GBIF lists other English names, including American lynx, Alaskan lynx and Newfoundland lynx. In French Canada it is the loup-cervier, and the Ojibwe call it bizhiw.

Evolution and relatives

A 2006 genetic study traced the cat lineages of the Americas to ancestors that crossed the Bering land bridge 8.5 to 8 million years ago. The Lynx line split from the puma and small cat lines about 2.53 to 4.74 million years ago. The Issoire lynx is thought to be the ancestor of all four living lynxes. It probably arose in Africa about 4 million years ago and died out in Eurasia about 1 million years ago.

Eurasian lynxes entered North America about 2.6 million years ago and settled the ice-free south. Those southern animals became the bobcat. A second wave arrived within the last 200,000 years and spread across the north once the glaciers withdrew. That northern wave became the Canada lynx. Fossils of the species date to the Sangamonian and Wisconsin glacial stages. The palaeontologist Lars Werdelin noted in 1981 that the species has changed little since it first appeared.

Appearance

The Canada lynx is lean but looks bulky because of its long, dense fur. Total length runs from 73 to 107 centimetres, and the shoulder height is 48 to 56 cm. Females weigh 5 to 12 kilograms and males 6 to 17 kg. One exceptional male from Pennsylvania weighed 20 kg. The tail is short, 5 to 13 centimetres, and ends in a solid black tip. Muscle makes up 56.5% of the body weight.

The coat is usually yellowish brown with few markings, and the belly is white with some dark spots. Newfoundland animals turn from brown or buff-grey in summer to a grizzled grey in winter. Black tufts about 4 cm long rise from the ear tips, and the ears are edged in black. In winter the cheek fur grows into a ruff around the throat. The paws are huge and furred and can spread to 10 cm across on soft snow. They carry almost twice the load of a bobcat's feet before they sink.

The claws pull back fully into the toes. The lynx has 28 teeth, with four long canines that are rich in nerves. Compared with the bobcat, it has longer ear tufts, bigger feet, longer legs, a shorter tail and a greyer coat.

Habitat and range

The species lives mainly in the thick spruce and fir forest of Canada and Alaska. Its range matches that of the snowshoe hare almost exactly. In the past it reached 24 states of the northern United States and perhaps the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico. Today it survives in the Cascades, the Blue Mountains, the Rockies, northern Minnesota, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and northern New England. Colorado lost its lynx in the 1970s and began releasing new animals in 1999. In 2022 a hunter photographed a large male in the Gros Ventre Range of Wyoming, the first confirmed record there since 2012.

The lynx avoids open country even where prey is plentiful. It struggles in heavily logged land and on farmland. Forest that has regrown for at least fifteen years after cutting can hold good numbers. Animals have been recorded as high as 4,310 metres. ADW notes that it also uses open forest, rocky ground and tundra. It is regarded as extirpated in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Nevada, Indiana and Ohio.

Diet and hunting

The snowshoe hare makes up 35 to 97% of the diet, depending on season and hare numbers. When hares are scarce the lynx turns to grouse, ptarmigan, ducks, voles, moles and red squirrels. It also takes young Dall's sheep, mule deer and woodland caribou. In summer and autumn it is less choosy and adds more small mammals. It eats about 0.6 to 1.2 kilograms of food a day. It sometimes eats grasses, sedges and succulent plants.

The lynx hunts at twilight and at night, when hares are active. It finds prey by sight and hearing, and its forward-facing eyes judge distance well. It waits on hare trails in what researchers call ambush beds, then pounces. A chase of a few bounds may follow. The kill is a bite to the head, throat or nape. Larger prey gets a throat bite that stops its breathing.

The cat may eat at once or cache the carcass under snow or leaves for several days. In the Yukon, lynx succeeded in 28.7% of hunts, while coyotes managed 36.9%. A lynx needs 0.4 to 0.5 hares a day but killed 1.2 a day when hares were abundant. Mothers and kittens sometimes hunt in a line through open ground, and one animal flushes prey for another. Scavenging is common, and lynx feed on deer killed by cold, cars or hunters.

Behaviour and social life

The lynx is mostly nocturnal, though it moves by day at times. It travels 8 to 9 kilometres a night at a slow walk of 0.75 to 1.46 km/h. It swims well, and one animal crossed 3.2 km of the Yukon River. It climbs trees to escape danger but hunts only on the ground.

Adults live alone except for mothers with kittens and brief pairings in the mating season. Animals of the same sex avoid each other, so territories overlap between sexes but not within a sex. Bears, bobcats and cougars share this intrasexual pattern. Fights between lynx are rare, and cannibalism appears only when food runs short.

Home ranges vary from 11 to 300 square kilometres, and radio tracking gives larger figures than snow tracking. In Minnesota males held 145 to 243 km2 and females 51 to 122 km2. A female shrinks her range while she raises kittens and expands it again at weaning. When hares fell from 14.7 to 1 per hectare in one study, ranges trebled from 13.2 to 39.2 km2. Lynx seldom leave their ranges, but a hare crash can push them more than 1,000 km.

Communication and senses

Like other cats, the lynx marks its range with urine and droppings on stumps and snow. Scent probably tells neighbours who lives where without a meeting. During the mating season it also uses urine marking and calls to bring the sexes together. Observers have heard long wailing cries that are probably mating calls. Touch is likely to matter between a mother and her kittens and between mates.

Sight is the main hunting sense, and hearing is excellent. The eyes face forward and give stereoscopic vision for judging a pounce. The ear tufts may help gather sound, as is thought for other lynxes. The canine teeth are full of nerves, so the cat can feel exactly where it bites.

Reproduction and life cycle

Mating runs for about a month from March into early April. ADW gives February and March for the season in some areas. A female comes into heat once a year, for three to five days in captivity. She can ovulate on her own when mates are many, or in response to mating when they are few. She prepares a den in thick brush, under logs, stumps or root tangles.

Gestation lasts two to three months, or 56 to 70 days in the ADW figures. Litters range from one to eight kittens, and two or three is typical. Litters shrink and kitten deaths rise in years when hares decline. Most births fall between May and July. Newborns weigh 175 to 235 grams and wear greyish buff fur with black marks. Their eyes open at about two weeks, and they are weaned at twelve weeks.

Kittens leave the den at about five weeks and start hunting at seven to nine months. Young lynx go their own way at about ten months, when the next mating season starts. Daughters settle near their mother and stay in contact for life, while sons move far away. Females can breed at ten months but often wait a year, and males mature at two or three. Wild lynx have reached 16 years, but most die before ten. In captivity one animal lived to 26.8 years.

Predators and threats

Few animals hunt an adult lynx. In northern Maine, fishers were the leading cause of lynx deaths over twelve years. Even so, fisher predation did not slow the growth of that population. Wolves and bears probably take kittens. Coyotes compete for hares, and the eastern coyote presses the lynx hard in eastern Canada.

Plague was a major killer among the lynx released in Colorado. The species hosts several parasites, among them Toxocara cati and Taenia tapeworms. In 2019 researchers found a new herpesvirus, named LcaGHV1, in lynx from Maine and Newfoundland. Trapping takes many animals each year in Canada and Alaska, but the harvest follows population data. South of the border the chief threat is lost habitat, and traffic kills some dispersing animals. Of 80 lynx released in New York between 1989 and 1992, nineteen died on roads and eight were shot by bobcat hunters.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the Canada lynx as Least Concern. It is common across a very large range, and legal trade has not harmed it for centuries. Numbers swing with the hare cycle by a factor of three to seventeen. Fur records of the Hudson's Bay Company, kept since the 1730s, show this cycle over nearly three centuries. It is on CITES Appendix II, which regulates the fur trade.

The southern populations are small and protected from trapping. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia list it as Endangered, and Michigan does the same. In 2000 the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as Threatened in 14 states. In 2005 the service named six core areas, from Maine to the Cascades and Greater Yellowstone. Colorado's reintroduction, begun in 1999, had self-sustaining populations by 2010.

A 2017 study reported rising numbers in many parts of the United States. In 2018 the service said the species no longer needed special protection there. The service still works with states, tribes and land managers on forest plans that keep lynx habitat. Biologists count lynx with camera stations baited with skunk scent, with snow tracking and with hair snares.

Relationship with humans

People have trapped this cat for its fur since the seventeenth century. Alberta produces nearly a third of Canada's pelts. After a hare crash, yearly pelt exports from both countries fell from 35,669 in 1980 to 1984 to 7,360 in 1986 to 1989. They rose again to 15,387 a year in 2000 to 2006. Between 1980 and 2004 the species made up thirty percent of legal lynx items in world trade. Illegal trade is thought to be negligible.

Restrictions on big-cat furs in the late 1960s pushed more demand onto lynx pelts. The lynx never attacks people and does no known harm to farms or forestry. It helps by controlling hares and voles, which damage young trees and crops. Trappers, hound hunters and hikers sometimes meet one, and it usually climbs a tree or slips away. Probably no other North American cat is so closely tied to deep snow.

In culture and myth

The lynx appears in the stories of many First Nations and Native American peoples. Among tribes of the Northwest, it stands for skill in hunting and for responsible conduct. In Northeastern tales the lynx is often a greedy villain, and a rabbit or another small animal outwits it. To the Anishinaabe it is a spirit both feared and powerful, tied to the Midewiwin medicine society. Eastern Woodlands lore tells of the Great Lynx, a monster of the deep water.

The Mohave, who live far from lynx country, believed that lynx dreams brought hunting power. The Chippewa keep a lynx clan named Bizhiw, the same word GBIF records as the Ojibwe name. The French name loup-cervier, the deer wolf, probably came from settlers who saw it take deer. The hare cycle itself became famous in science as the Lotka Volterra predator and prey model. Modern writers say the lynx is a ghost of the forest, because it is seldom seen, and that reputation seems earned.