Bobcat

Bobcats eat meat.

Their favorite food is rabbits. They also catch mice, squirrels and birds. A bobcat hides and waits, then pounces!

Bobcats are carnivores, and in most places rabbits and hares are their main food. They also catch mice, rats, squirrels, chipmunks, birds and sometimes young deer. They change what they eat with the seasons, catching whatever is easiest to find.

A bobcat is an ambush hunter. It hides in thick plants, waits patiently, then rushes out and pounces. Most of its prey weighs less than 3 kilograms.

Like the Canada lynx, the bobcat preys mainly on lagomorphs (rabbits and hares), but it is far less of a specialist. Its diet includes rodents, squirrels, chipmunks, beavers, birds, opossums, peccaries and occasionally white-tailed deer; a study in Virginia recorded 15 prey species, with seasonal switching (IUCN).

Most prey weighs under 3 kilograms. In the north, deer floundering in deep snow can be important winter food, and bobcats also scavenge when prey is scarce. Males tend to take larger prey than females, while juveniles eat proportionally more rodents and carrion (IUCN Cat Specialist Group). Bobcats hunt by ambush from dense vegetation.

Bobcats like to live alone.

They are busy mostly at dawn and dusk. They leave smells on the ground to tell other bobcats, "This is my place."

Bobcats are solitary, which means they live alone except when mothers raise kittens. They are mostly crepuscular, active at dawn and dusk, but some are out in the day or at night.

Each bobcat has a home range. Males roam over bigger areas than females, often two to three times bigger. Bobcats mark their areas with urine, droppings and scratches on the ground, which tell other bobcats who lives there.

Bobcats are solitary and mainly crepuscular, though activity varies with environment. Across 29 U.S. populations, female home ranges averaged about 15.8 square kilometers (range 1 to 42.7) and male ranges about 39.7 square kilometers (range 2.9 to 167.9) (IUCN). Male ranges usually enclose those of several females, while female ranges are more exclusive except at high densities.

Scent marking with urine, feces, anal gland secretions and ground scrapes is the main way bobcats communicate. Where bobcats and Canada lynx meet, the more aggressive bobcat usually displaces the lynx, and the two occasionally hybridize. Bobcats can share areas with coyotes and pumas where prey is plentiful, though pumas sometimes kill them.

There are lots of bobcats in North America.

They need wild places with bushes and trees. People help by keeping those places wild.

The bobcat is listed as Least Concern, and its numbers are stable or growing in most of the United States. In the Midwest, bobcats have come back to places where they had disappeared a hundred years ago.

They still face problems. Roads and growing cities break up their homes, cars hit bobcats, and some are harmed by rat poison. In southern Florida, bobcat sightings dropped as invasive pythons spread there. Keeping wild cover and connecting it helps bobcats thrive.

The IUCN assessed the bobcat as Least Concern in 2016, with a stable trend. A 2010 survey of state agencies estimated 2.35 to 3.57 million bobcats in the United States, with populations stable or increasing in 40 states and declining only in Florida, where observations fell as invasive pythons increased.

Bobcats are legally harvested in 38 U.S. states and 7 Canadian provinces, and the bobcat is the most heavily harvested cat in the international fur trade (IUCN Cat Specialist Group). Pelt prices rose from $85 in 2000 to $589 in 2013, raising concern about sustainability. Other local threats include habitat loss, urbanization, road deaths, anticoagulant rat poisons and disease such as canine distemper. The species is on CITES Appendix II.