Mammals
Caracal
Caracal caracal · also called desert lynx, Persian lynx, African lynx
The caracal is a sleek, tawny wild cat with a startling talent — it can jump three metres straight up and pluck birds out of the air. It is one of the most widespread cats in Africa and Asia, and one of the least often seen.
Overview
Caracals live across most of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and into northwestern India, in dry and semi-dry habitats: savanna, thornscrub, semi-desert, rocky hills, and open woodland. They avoid true rainforest and the most extreme desert. They are solitary, territorial, and mostly nocturnal, resting up in dense cover, rock crevices, or old burrows by day, and they are highly secretive despite living close to farms and even, in Cape Town, to a major city.
Built to spring
The caracal is a compact, muscular cat with long hind legs, a short tail, and its signature tufted black ears. The hindquarters are the key feature: they give the caracal the best vertical jump of any cat, roughly three metres from standing. When a caracal stalks a group of ground birds — sandgrouse, francolins, doves — and they burst into flight, the cat launches upward and knocks one or two down with its forepaws before they can climb away. It also takes hares, rock hyraxes, rodents, mongooses, and young or small antelope on the ground, killing with a nape bite, and can bring down prey several times its own weight.
Caracals and people
The name comes from the Turkish karakulak, “black ear,” and the animal has a long history alongside humans. In medieval Persia and India, caracals were trained for bird-hunting contests, released into flocks of pigeons for wagers — the likely origin of the English idiom about a cat among the pigeons. Today, in farming areas of southern Africa and the Middle East, caracals are often persecuted as killers of sheep and goats, and this conflict, rather than habitat loss, is the main pressure on them.
Reproduction
Caracals breed year-round where conditions allow. After a gestation of about 10–11 weeks, the female gives birth to one to four kittens in a sheltered den. The kittens’ ear tufts are short at first and grow with age. They are weaned at around 10 weeks and become independent at 9 to 12 months.
Status
The caracal is listed as Least Concern overall. African populations are broad and mostly stable, and the cat adapts well to farmland and disturbed habitat. The Asian populations — from Arabia through Central Asia to India — are much smaller, fragmented, and declining, hit by habitat loss, prey depletion, killing by herders, and the exotic-pet trade, and are a growing conservation concern.
Caracal: common questions
How high can a caracal jump?
A caracal can leap around 3 metres vertically from a standing position — the best vertical of any cat relative to its size. It uses this to hunt birds, exploding upward as a flock flushes and swatting or grabbing one or two out of the air with its front paws before they gain height. Historically, caracals in India and Persia were tamed and used for this — they were released into flocks of pigeons and wagers were placed on how many a cat could bring down in one leap, which is said to be the origin of the phrase "to put a cat among the pigeons."
Is a caracal a type of lynx?
No, despite the old names "desert lynx" and "Persian lynx." Caracals have the tufted ears and short tail of a lynx but belong to their own genus, and genetic work shows their closest relatives are the African golden cat and the serval, not the true lynxes of the northern forests. The resemblance is convergent — several arid-country cats have evolved a similar build.
Are caracals dangerous, and can they be pets?
A caracal is not a threat to an adult human and attacks are almost unheard of, but it is a powerful wild predator, not a domestic animal. It is kept as an exotic pet in some countries and appears widely on social media, but caracals are territorial, need large space and a live-prey or whole-prey diet, spray to mark, and can injure people and other pets. Many "pet" caracals end up surrendered to sanctuaries. In parts of its range it is also killed by farmers as a livestock predator.
What does a caracal use its ear tufts for?
It is not fully settled. The long black tufts may help funnel sound to the ears, improving the caracal's already acute hearing for locating small prey in grass. They may also be used for visual signalling between caracals — twitched and flattened in social and territorial displays — and to break up the outline of the head. The 20 muscles controlling each ear let a caracal rotate and aim them independently with great precision.