Caracal

Name and taxonomy

Georges Buffon proposed the name caracal in 1761, from the Turkish karrah-kulak, black ear. Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber described the species as Felis caracal in 1776, from a skin taken at the Cape of Good Hope. John Edward Gray moved it into its own genus, Caracal, in 1843. It sits in the cat family Felidae and the subfamily Felinae, the small cats.

People often call it the desert lynx or Persian lynx, and GBIF also lists red lynx, African lynx and gazelle cat. When Greek and Roman writers said lynx, they most likely meant this cat, but the true lynxes are a separate genus. Since 2017 three subspecies are accepted: the southern caracal, the northern caracal of North and West Africa, and the Asiatic caracal.

Evolution and relatives

The caracal's closest relative is the African golden cat, and the two split between 2.93 and 1.19 million years ago. Those two cats plus the serval make up the Caracal lineage. That lineage broke away from the other cats between 11.56 and 6.66 million years ago. Its ancestor reached Africa between 8.5 and 5.6 million years ago.

The caracal is not a lynx, despite the ear tufts. A lynx has a spotted, blotched coat, while the caracal's coat is plain. The golden cat is built much the same way but is darker and has no tufts. The serval, which shares much of its range, has a spotted coat, longer legs, a longer tail and white spots behind the ears. In the 1990s a captive caracal mated with a domestic cat at Moscow Zoo and produced a hybrid kitten.

Appearance

The caracal is a slim but solid cat with a short face, long legs and long canine teeth. Its short bushy tail reaches the hocks. It stands about 40 to 50 centimetres at the shoulder. A male measures 78 to 108 centimetres from head to rump, with a tail of 21 to 34 cm, and weighs 7.2 to 19 kilograms. A female measures 71 to 103 cm, with a tail of 18 to 31.5 cm, and weighs 7 to 15.9 kg. The hind legs stand taller than the front legs, so the back slopes down towards the shoulders.

The ear tufts are black and about 4.5 centimetres long, and they may droop with age. Two black lines run from the forehead to the nose, the mouth has a black outline, and white patches ring the eyes and mouth. The upper eyelid sits low, which probably shields the eye from glare. Eye colour runs from gold and copper to green or grey.

The coat is an even reddish tan or sand colour, paler on the belly and inside the legs, with small reddish spots there. Black caracals occur but are very rare. The fur is short, soft and dense, and the guard hairs grow to 3 centimetres in winter and 2 cm in summer. The cat has 30 teeth, with canines up to 2 cm long, and it lacks the second upper premolar.

Habitat and range

In Africa the caracal lives almost everywhere south of the Sahara, outside the rainforest belt of West and Central Africa. It is rare in North Africa and may be close to extinction there. In Asia it ranges from the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to western India. GBIF holds records from 50 countries, though that count includes zoos.

It uses savanna, scrub, semi-desert, marshy lowland, rocky hills and dry forest. It likes dry places with low rainfall and some cover, and it does best where forest meets grassland. It copes with far drier country than the serval, but it avoids true desert and wet tropical forest. In the Ethiopian Highlands it climbs to 3,000 metres.

The Asian range is thin and broken. In Uzbekistan the cat survives only on the Ustyurt Plateau and in the Kyzylkum Desert, where 15 were seen alive from 2000 to 2017. A camera trap in Abu Dhabi caught a male in 2019, the first record there since the mid 1980s. In India it holds on in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, including Sariska and Ranthambhore.

Diet and hunting

Small mammals make up at least 80% of the diet. Rock hyraxes, hares, rodents and birds are the staples, and doves and partridges matter in season. In South Africa it takes Cape grysbok, common duiker, vlei rats and Cape hares. It also kills young kudu, impala, springbok and several gazelles, and small monkeys. Lizards, snakes and insects fill the rest, and it eats grass and grapes now and then, which may clear parasites.

The caracal stalks to within about 5 metres, then sprints. Its hind legs launch it more than 3 metres into the air, and it can twist in flight to meet a bird. Large prey dies from a throat bite that cuts off the air, and small prey from a bite to the nape. It eats a kill on the spot, and it returns to a large carcass if nothing disturbs it. Unlike a leopard, it rarely drags a kill into a tree, but it will scrape earth over the remains.

Where sheep and goats graze, the cat takes some, mostly when wild prey runs short. At Simon's Town in South Africa, caracals caused about 11% of African penguin deaths between 1999 and 2021. In western India, rodents form a large share of the diet.

Behaviour and social life

The caracal is mostly nocturnal, though it moves by day in cool weather or in undisturbed reserves. A South African study found it most active below 20 degrees Celsius, with activity stopping in the heat. It lives alone or briefly in pairs, and the only groups are mothers with kittens. It is so secretive that daytime activity may simply go unseen.

Both sexes hold territories and mark rocks and bushes with urine, and probably with uncovered dung. Claw scratching is common. In Israel a male's range averages 220 square kilometres and a female's 57. In Saudi Arabia male ranges run from 270 to 1,116 square kilometres. In South Africa's Mountain Zebra National Park a female needs only 4.0 to 6.5 square kilometres. A male's range overlaps with several other males, while a female keeps hers for herself.

The cat climbs well and is bold for its size. ADW records a single caracal driving off a predator twice its own size. When threatened in open country it lies flat and lets its plain coat hide it.

Communication and senses

No one has studied caracal communication in depth, and most of what is known comes from captive cats. Like other cats it meows, growls, hisses, spits and purrs. Captive cats also gurgle, give a wah-wah call and bark with a loud cough. A cough-like call has been reported as a mating signal.

The ear tufts and face markings seem to carry visual messages. Caracals have been seen flicking their heads sideways, which makes the tufts flutter at each other. A female in season marks with urine far more often, and a male reads that scent with the vomeronasal organ. Hearing is sharp enough to locate small prey by sound alone, and sight then guides the pounce.

Reproduction and life cycle

Both sexes can breed by one year old, though the first successful mating usually comes at 12 to 15 months. Breeding goes on all year, but births peak from October to February. ADW suggests a female comes into season when she is best fed, which explains the peak. Oestrus lasts one to three days and returns every two weeks until she conceives. Several males may court one female, and she tends to pick the older and larger ones. Mating lasts under five minutes, and she almost always mates with more than one male.

Gestation takes 68 to 81 days. The litter holds one to six kittens, though wild litters rarely exceed three. The den is a burrow left by an aardvark or porcupine, a tree hollow, a cave or thick cover. Kittens are born deaf and blind, with claws they cannot yet draw in, and with a spotted belly. The eyes open by ten days, and the ears stand up and the claws retract by the third or fourth week.

Play and the first meat begin around the fifth or sixth week, but the first kill waits nearly three months. The mother moves the kittens to a new spot every day once they can walk. Nursing ends at about 15 weeks, and the young leave at nine to ten months, though some daughters stay on. A female raises only one litter a year. Wild caracals live about 12 years on average, and the captive record is 20.3 years.

Predators and threats

Lions and hyenas can kill a caracal, but they do not hunt it regularly. Its main defences are camouflage and climbing. Male caracals sometimes kill kittens, perhaps to bring the mother back into season.

People are the real threat. Farms, roads and settlements eat into its habitat in every range country. Herders and farmers kill it over sheep and goats, and in South Africa and Namibia it is culled as a pest. In Uzbekistan at least 11 were killed by herders between 2000 and 2017, against 15 seen alive. Cars kill many in Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia, and the pet trade takes cats in Arabia.

Population and conservation

The IUCN has listed the caracal as Least Concern since 2002. No range-wide count exists, but numbers are stable in central and Southern Africa. The picture is worse at the edges: nearly gone from North Africa, critically endangered in Pakistan and endangered in Jordan. Uzbekistan has listed it as Critically Endangered since 2009 and Kazakhstan since 2010. India may hold fewer than 100.

African populations sit on CITES Appendix II, and Asian populations on Appendix I, which bans commercial trade. Hunting is illegal in 17 countries, from Afghanistan and Algeria to Turkey and Uzbekistan. South Africa rates it Least Concern and asks farmers to report sightings and livestock losses to a national centre. The cat recolonises cleared farmland quickly, which keeps its African numbers up despite the culls.

Relationship with humans

Rulers in India and Persia trained caracals to course game birds and small deer. Mughal emperors used them from at least the time of the Delhi Sultanate, and Indian princes kept the sport up into the 20th century. The caracal took bustards, francolins and other game birds, while the cheetah took larger game. Cats were loosed into arenas full of pigeons, and people bet on which would kill the most. That game probably gave English the phrase about a cat among the pigeons.

Yuan dynasty rulers in China bought caracals, cheetahs and tigers from Muslim traders in the 13th and 14th centuries, paying in gold, silver and silk. The Ming court kept the practice going. The pelt once went into fur coats, though its plain colour keeps demand low today. In West and Central Africa the cat is eaten as bushmeat.

Today the caracal is mostly a farmer's problem and an exotic pet. Predator control in South Africa and Namibia kills thousands each year. The cat avoids people and poses no real danger to them.

In culture and myth

In ancient Egyptian tradition the caracal held religious meaning. It appears in tomb paintings and as bronze figurines, and its sculptures probably stood guard at the tombs of pharaohs. Embalmed caracals have been found. Web sources link the cat to the goddess Bastet and the sun god Ra, and say Egyptians believed it kept off evil spirits.

In Turkish the cat is the black ear, and that name travelled into every European language. In Mughal India the caracal stood for the sport of kings, second only to the cheetah. Some African traditions are said to tie the cat to hunting skill, protection and survival in dry land. Claims of Native American or Celtic caracal lore come from spirit-animal blogs and seem invented, since the cat never lived in either region.