Mammals
Serval
Leptailurus serval · also called tierboskat, bush cat
The serval is the greyhound of the cat family — a tall, leggy, big-eared hunter of the African grasslands built almost entirely around one job: finding small rodents in long grass by sound and pouncing on them blind.
Overview
Servals live in sub-Saharan Africa, strongly favouring moist grassland, reedbeds, marsh edges, and savanna near water where rodent numbers are high. They are solitary and territorial, mostly active around dawn, dusk, and at night, and they rest by day in dense grass or an abandoned burrow. They tolerate agricultural land well and are often found around rice fields and cane where rats are abundant.
An ear-guided predator
The serval’s proportions are extreme. Its legs are the longest of any cat relative to size, and its ears are the largest — and both serve the same purpose: lifting its senses above the grass. A hunting serval moves in slow steps, freezing to listen, its dish-like ears rotating to locate the faint sounds of a rodent, sometimes one tunnelling below ground. Having pinpointed the target, it performs its trademark high, arcing pounce, landing forepaws-together on the spot. Roughly half of these pounces connect — an unusually high success rate for a cat — and a serval may catch a rodent every couple of hours through the night.
Beyond rodents, servals take birds (leaping to grab them as they flush), frogs and fish (scooped from shallow water with a hooked paw), reptiles, and large insects.
Reproduction
After a gestation of around 10–11 weeks, a female serval gives birth to one to four kittens in dense cover or a burrow. She moves them between den sites and teaches them to hunt; they become independent at around a year old. Males play no role in rearing.
Threats and status
The serval is Least Concern and, across most of its range, secure — helped by its adaptability to farmland. Localised threats include hunting for skins (sold fraudulently as leopard or cheetah), killing as a poultry pest, wetland drainage that removes its best habitat, and capture for the exotic-pet and Savannah-cat trade. The one population in serious trouble is the small, fragmented relict in North Africa, listed as Critically Endangered.
Serval: common questions
How does a serval hunt with its ears?
A serval hunts mainly by sound. It walks slowly through tall grass or reeds, stopping to listen with its huge, mobile ears, which it swivels to triangulate the rustle of a rodent — even one moving in a burrow beneath the surface. When it has fixed the position, it rocks back and springs, sometimes 3 metres forward and high into the air, and comes down with its front paws together on the exact spot, pinning or stunning prey it may never have seen. It can also flush prey by tapping the ground, and hook fish and frogs out of shallow water with a paw.
Why does a serval have such long legs?
The long legs — proportionally the longest of any cat, achieved mainly by elongating the bones of the foot — raise the serval's head and ears above the grass so it can see and, more importantly, hear over the vegetation, and they power its exceptional vertical and forward leaps. They also let it lope efficiently across open country and wade into wetlands. The trade-off is that servals are not sprinters or climbers to the degree that shorter-legged cats are.
Are servals good pets, and what is a Savannah cat?
Servals are wild animals and make poor pets — they need large enclosures, spray heavily to mark territory, have specialised dietary needs, and can injure people and other animals. Many are surrendered. The Savannah cat is a hybrid breed created by crossing a serval with a domestic cat; early-generation Savannahs retain much wild behaviour and are restricted or banned in many places, while later generations are calmer but still demanding.
Is the serval endangered?
As a species, no — it is Least Concern, widespread across sub-Saharan Africa, and adapts well to farmland and even sugarcane plantations where rodents are plentiful. The exception is the isolated population in North Africa (Morocco, and formerly Algeria and Tunisia), which is Critically Endangered and may number only a few dozen. Servals everywhere are hunted for their spotted skins, which are sometimes passed off as young leopard or cheetah, and killed as poultry predators.