A wild cat about the size of a medium dog can launch itself roughly 10 feet straight up and knock a bird out of the air before it gets away. That cat is the caracal, and the jump is only one of the skills that make it one of the most capable hunters among the small wild cats.
Its ears can turn on their own like two separate satellite dishes. It can go long stretches without drinking. And in South Africa, a few of them were once filmed working on a military airbase. Here is what makes the caracal different from every other cat.
Caracal at a glance
- Weight Males 16 to 42 pounds, females 15 to 35 pounds
- Height About 16 to 20 inches at the shoulder
- Range Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, Central Asia and northwestern India
- Top speed Around 50 miles per hour in short bursts
- Lifespan About 12 years in the wild
- Status Least Concern worldwide, but rare in North Africa and much of Asia
Where caracals live and what they look like
The caracal covers a huge area. It lives across most of Africa outside the rainforests and the central Sahara, then east through the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and Central Asia into Pakistan and northwestern India. It does best in dry country: savanna, scrub, semi-desert and rocky hills.
It is the heaviest of Africa’s small cats. Males usually weigh between 16 and 42 pounds and are noticeably bigger than females. The coat is short and reddish brown to sandy, with white fur on the chin, throat and belly and no spots or stripes. The body is long-legged and lean, and the back legs are longer than the front ones.
The name comes from the Turkish word karakulak, which means black ear. Each ear is long, pointed and topped with a tuft of black hair up to about 2 inches long. Those tufts earned it the nickname desert lynx, but the caracal is a separate animal from the lynx. Genetic studies show its closest living relatives are the African golden cat and the serval.
Ears that work like radar
Each caracal ear is moved by about 20 muscles. A human ear has six. That lets the cat swivel each ear independently and lock onto faint sounds, such as a mouse moving through dry grass. Hearing plays a large part in how it finds prey, especially at night.
Nobody knows for certain what the black tufts are for. The most widely accepted idea is communication: caracals twitch their ears, and the dark tufts make those signals easy for another caracal to see. Other suggestions include keeping flies off the face and breaking up the outline of the head in tall grass.
The jump that catches birds in flight
When a group of birds bursts off the ground, a caracal can spring straight up after them. Most sources put the height at about 10 feet. Its long, powerful hind legs do the work, and it swats with both front paws in the air. Because it can use each paw separately, it sometimes brings down more than one bird in a single leap.
People noticed this skill centuries ago. In Iran and India, caracals were captured and trained to hunt birds, hares and small gazelles for royal and wealthy hunters. Accounts from that era describe wagers on how many pigeons a single cat could knock down when a flock was released in front of it.
What caracals eat
Birds are only part of the menu. Caracals eat rodents, hares, rock hyraxes, small monkeys and small antelope, and they can take down animals two to three times their own weight. A typical hunt starts with a slow, quiet stalk. Once the cat gets within about 16 feet, it rushes forward at speeds of up to around 50 miles per hour, which makes it one of the fastest cats of its size.
Caracals can also go a long time without drinking. They get most of the water they need from the bodies of the animals they eat, which is a big reason they can live in such dry places.
A solitary life, mostly at night
Adult caracals spend most of their time alone. They mark their home ranges with scratches, urine and droppings, and a male’s range is usually about twice the size of a female’s. Most of their activity happens at night, though they may hunt by day where they feel safe.
They meow, purr, growl and hiss like many other cats, and they also make a short, bark-like call when they sense danger.
How caracal kittens grow up
The mother raises the kittens alone. Pregnancy lasts about two and a half months, and a litter has one to six kittens, usually two or three. The kittens are born blind and with their ears folded flat. They start eating meat at about a month old, and the mother moves them between hiding places, such as burrows, thick brush and rock crevices, to keep them away from predators.
By around 9 to 12 months, the young caracals leave to find territories of their own. In the wild they usually live to about 12 years. In zoos, some reach their late teens.
Caracals and people
Worldwide, the caracal is listed as Least Concern, the lowest-risk category, because across its range as a whole the population is large and widespread. The picture is different at the edges. It is rare in North and West Africa, it is considered critically endangered in Morocco, and it has become scarce across much of Asia, including India.
The biggest conflict is with farmers. Caracals sometimes kill sheep, goats and poultry, and in South Africa they are often shot or trapped as livestock predators. Studies from South African farms found that caracals mostly prefer wild prey, but they will take livestock when there is far more of it around than natural food. Removing adult caracals can make the problem worse, because younger, less experienced cats move into the empty territory.
The city caracals of Cape Town
Some caracals have learned to live right next to people. Around Cape Town, South Africa, researchers with the Urban Caracal Project fitted cats with GPS collars and followed them through nature reserves, wetlands, vineyards, golf courses and the edges of suburbs. With lions and leopards long gone from the area, the caracal is now the city’s largest wild predator.
City life comes with real costs. Cars cause most caracal deaths in the area. Researchers have also found rat poison and other pollutants in the cats’ blood, most likely from eating poisoned rodents. The project has pushed for wildlife corridors through the city and for less use of rodent poison.
The caracals that guarded a runway
The caracal’s mix of sharp hearing and that vertical leap once led to an unusual job. A documentary called Top Cat, released in 2000, followed a family of caracals rescued from the exotic pet trade in Britain and moved to a South African Air Force base, where they were used to help keep flocks of birds off the runways. Birds that get sucked into jet engines are a serious danger to aircraft, and a cat that can hear birds before they move and reach them once they take off is well suited to the job.
