A cat of Africa and parts of Asia, recognized by its reddish-brown to brown coat and long black ear tufts.
Its hind legs are long and muscular, and its tail is relatively short. Young animals have shorter ear tufts than adults.
In Cape Town, South Africa, caracals changed how they used space with age and time of day. Researchers fitted GPS collars to 25 cats on the Cape Peninsula and compared areas strongly affected by the city with more continuous wildland. Urban adults selected dense vegetation for cover during the day and were less likely to avoid roads at night.
Subadult males were recorded closer to the city than adults; 30.7% of their locations were inside the urban area, compared with 6.5% for urban adults. Yet activity data showed no greater nocturnality in city caracals. All groups remained mainly active around dawn and dusk. At the boundary between neighborhoods and natural land, age and time of day shaped where these cats moved.
IUCN Red List · Least Concern (LC) · Global
The caracal’s global IUCN Red List category is Least Concern (LC). It was assessed on 9 May 2014 and published in 2016; the wild population trend is listed as Unknown. The assessment says local declines have not caused significant loss of global range, and the current entry is flagged as needing an update. The IUCN Cat Specialist Group describes more severe regional statuses, including Critically Endangered in Morocco and Vulnerable in Israel. Habitat destruction and fragmentation, hunting, trapping and poisoning are among the threats it identifies.