Caracals are creatures that cultivate anonymity. A sleek and mysterious wild cat, is known for its striking appearance and agile hunting skills.
What is a caracal?
A caracal is a medium-sized beautiful wild cat with a sandy coat and some freckling (often faint) on the belly and the insides of the legs. It has large, black pointed ears.
Where do caracals live?
The caracal belongs to that group of 'African' mammals – including the ratel or honey badger, striped hyena, cheetah and lion – that most people are surprised to learn also live in Asia. A glance at its distribution map is quite revealing. The species occurs virtually everywhere in Africa except for the deepest Sahara Desert and the humid forests of the centre and west.
In the Middle East, it is reasonably common in Israel's arid lands, absent from the Saudi desert and rare in other countries where protection is minimal.
In India, it is found mainly in dry forests, but it's thought to be close to extinction there.
In other words, the caracal is nothing if not adaptable (a trait it shares with the leopard, the world's most versatile big cat).
What is their ideal habitat – and how far do they travel?
Caracals thrive in savannah, woodland and dry or rocky country. In ideal terrain, a male's territory is about 15km²; a female's is roughly one-third this size. In Israeli semi-desert, a male roams 220km² on average, a female about 60km².
What do caracals eat?
If you asked a typical caracal what it likes for dinner, it would say small mammals, from rodents, hares and hyraxes up to the size of antelopes. The species also eats birds, reptiles and insects, and, in Israel, partridge is top of the menu.
A study in South Africa's Mountain Zebra National Park found that 70 per cent of the local caracals' diet comprised adult mountain reedbucks. This is astonishing. The caracal, like most cats, varies hugely in size, but reedbucks weigh at least 30kg - half as much again as even the largest male. For an animal to flourish on such a wide range of prey, it must be extraordinarily versatile: light on its feet, yet with very strong muscles.
How big are caracals?
The length of a caracal's body is between 60-90cm, with a tail clocking in at 20-30cm.
Male caracals tend to weigh between 8 and 20kg, with females weighing 6-16kg.
What do caracals look like?
One of the caracal's key adaptations is its shape. Long rear legs and powerful haunches give the cat a 'sloping' profile from back to front, enabling it to bound over rough ground and boulders with great efficiency, wasting little energy. As a result, the caracal thrives in difficult terrain that would be marginal for larger predators.
It is actually the biggest carnivore on the block in Mountain Zebra National Park, so it can target prey that would normally be the preserve of leopards or lions.
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How high and far can caracals leap?
In other places and seasons, however, those formidable back legs mean that the caracal is able to leap high as well as long.
During the dry season, when birds flock to water holes, people have seen concealed caracals explode 3m into the air like coiled springs to catch doves or sandgrouse in their paws, sometimes even batting down two at a time. There are records of caracals plucking martial eagles from their perches, and of them killing adult impala and young kudu, as well as springboks, steenboks, duikers and vervet monkeys.
What is special about a caracal's eyes?
The caracal's pupils contract to form circles, like those of big cats, rather than slits as in small cats. This is a hallmark of species that are not wholly nocturnal.
Why do caracals have such big tufted ears?
The caracal uses its elegant tufted ears to show its feelings to a much greater degree than any other species of cat. This is most obvious in mothers with kittens. According to Shekhar Kolipaka, comfort seems to be indicated by slow twitches, and agreement by gentle movements that are mirrored by other individuals. If a caracal feels uneasy, it flips an ear nervously - when another caracal picks up this semaphore' signal, it freezes and checks for danger in the direction that the first cat is looking.
There is, of course, another advantage to big ears - they enable predators to locate small prey in burrows, which is why the ears of the jungle cat, bat-eared fox and jackals are also oversized, albeit less ornate than those of the caracal.
When and where do caracals breed?
In South Africa, mating occurs all year, with a peak in spring and summer; male stays with female for 3-6 days. Female bears litter of 1-6 kittens (average 2) in a burrow or among scrub, and raises them alone.
Kittens disperse after 10 months, when their teeth are fully grown.
How long do caracals live?
Caracals tend to live up to 12 years in the wild; typically 15-17 years in captivity.
Top image: Caracal striding in the wild (credit: Getty Images)