Caracal

Caracals eat meat.

They catch hares, mice, birds and small antelopes. A caracal can jump up high and grab a bird as it flies away!

Caracals are carnivores and not picky eaters. They catch hares, rodents, hyraxes, small antelopes, birds, lizards and snakes. Most of their prey weighs less than 5 kilograms, but a caracal can sometimes catch an animal two or three times its own size, such as a young kudu.

They are famous jumpers. A caracal often creeps up on a flock of birds and, as the birds take off, springs into the air to swat one down. The IUCN Cat Specialist Group says caracals can jump two meters or more, and the San Diego Zoo says up to 3 meters.

Caracals are generalist predators whose diet varies with what is available. Most prey weighs under 5 kilograms: hares, rodents, hyraxes, young antelopes, birds, reptiles including snakes, and invertebrates. They also kill smaller carnivores such as black-backed jackals and aardwolves, and can take prey two to three times their own size, such as adult springbok or young kudu (IUCN Cat Specialist Group).

They hunt mainly on the ground but climb well and sometimes cache large kills in trees. Their leap, two meters or more, lets them take birds as they flush. In some regions caracals also take sheep, goats and poultry, especially when wild prey is scarce, which leads to conflict with farmers.

Caracals live alone.

They mostly hunt at night. In the day they rest in bushes or among rocks. They can purr, growl and hiss.

Caracals are solitary, so each one lives mostly alone. They are mainly nocturnal, hunting at night, though where people leave them alone they may be out in the day too. They rest in thick bushes, rock crevices or burrows.

Each caracal has its own home range, which it marks with urine, droppings and claw marks. Caracals can purr when content and also growl, hiss and make a loud cough. The San Diego Zoo says they sometimes make a "wah-wah" sound when uneasy.

Caracals are solitary and mostly nocturnal, but daytime activity rises in protected areas, in winter and where people are scarce; in Yemen's Hawf Protected Area they were mainly active by day (IUCN Cat Specialist Group). Home ranges vary enormously with aridity, from about 4 to 31 square kilometers for females in South Africa's Cape to an average of 316 square kilometers for three males on Namibian ranchland, and 270 to 1,116 square kilometers across seasons for one male in Saudi Arabia.

Male ranges are larger and typically overlap several female ranges. Caracals mark with urine, feces and claw marks and also use their ears to communicate. Lions, leopards and hyenas sometimes kill caracals where their ranges overlap.

There are many caracals in southern Africa.

But in some places in Asia and North Africa there are very few. People help by protecting wild places and keeping farm animals safe.

Worldwide the caracal is listed as Least Concern. It is common in southern Africa, but it has become rare in North Africa and much of Asia, and it has disappeared from some places.

Caracals sometimes catch farm animals such as sheep and goats, so some farmers kill them. Losing wild land to farms and roads is another big problem. Better protection for sheep and goats can help farmers and caracals share the land.

The IUCN assessed the caracal as Least Concern in 2014 (published 2016; annotated as needing an update), with an unknown overall trend. Regionally the picture differs: national red lists class it as Critically Endangered in Pakistan and Morocco and Endangered in Jordan; it has vanished from Kuwait and parts of Turkmenistan, and may be close to extinction in much of North Africa, while remaining common and stable in central and southern Africa.

The main threats are persecution by farmers over livestock losses (from 1931 to 1952 an average of 2,219 caracals a year were killed in control operations in South Africa's Karoo), habitat loss to agriculture and desertification, and road deaths. The Cat Specialist Group also reports trade in caracals as exotic pets, including an estimated 50 to 100 a year trafficked from Somaliland to the Gulf. African populations are on CITES Appendix II and Asian ones on Appendix I.