GOING ON SAFARI!
With its big ears, slender body, and majestic coat pattern, it’s not hard to see the feline beauty in the Serval — but it’s still a true wildcat.
Iremember my first Serval very clearly. I was a young biology student visiting a friend of mine working as a bushveld camp manager in the Kruger National Park.We were on a night drive with safari clients, driving slowly and swinging a spotlight looking for nocturnal delights.We’d seen a tremendous male Lion, happened on several Black-backed Jackal, and glimpsed a magnificent African Civet.
We were trundling back to the camp on a remote firebreak track as the night turned cold and our thoughts drifted to hot coffee when Wayne stopped the vehicle suddenly and illuminated a set of predatory eyes off in the distant grassland. I heaved my camera and big lens into place and focussed in on the creature.There stood a feline vision, beautifully marked with spots and black bands, and enormous ears, frozen and dramatically poised with front paws perched up on a fallen log and looking directly at us — an adult Serval.
I held my breath and rattled off four or five frames before this fabulous cat vaporised into the inky darkness. I was beside myself with excitement.What a glorious animal! Those were the days of 35mm film cameras and I had to wait a while to get the photos developed, but the waiting was worth it.
I had one of the prints framed and it still adorns the wall here in my office.
AFRICAN NATIVE
The Serval (Leptailurus serval) is native only to Africa and the only member of its genus.The name ‘Serval’ is a Portuguese name first used by French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc in
1765 for a spotted cat that was kept at the time in the Royal Menagerie in Versailles. The genus name Leptailurus derives from the Greek meaning ‘fine, delicate cat’. Three subspecies have been recognised since 2017:
L. s. serval, the nominate subspecies in Southern Africa.
L. s. constantina in Central and West Africa.
L. s. lipostictus in East Africa.
The Serval is rare in North Africa, now known only in Morocco and Tunisia and feared extinct in Algeria, but relatively widespread in sub
Saharan countries. It is found throughout Southern and Eastern Africa, inhabiting grasslands, wetlands, and thickets at altitudes up to as high as 3,800m on Mount Kilimanjaro. It has a preference for areas adjacent to water that provide dense cover but avoids rainforest regions.
The Serval is a slender, medium-sized cat standing 54 — 62cm at the shoulder and weighing 9 — 18kg, with a golden-yellow to buff coat both spotted and striped with black, and a short black-tipped tail.The coat pattern is enormously varied on the spots and stripes theme and melanistic (black) and leucistic (near white but not albino) Servals have also been recorded.
Facial features include the brownish or greenish eyes, white whiskers on the snout and near the ears, a whitish chin, and spots and streaks on the cheeks and the forehead.The closely set ears
are black on the back with a horizontal white band and can rotate up to 180 degrees independently of one another. The Serval has an excellent sense of smell, hearing, and vision.
Three to four black stripes run from the back of the head on to the shoulders and then break into rows of spots.The white underbelly has dense and fluffy basal fur and soft guard hairs.
It has the longest legs of any cat relative to its body size.This is due to elongated metatarsal bones in the feet. The toes are elongated too and unusually mobile.
SOLITARY SERVAL
The Serval is a solitary carnivore active both by day and at night. It preys primarily on rodents, particularly rats, as well as small birds, frogs, insects, and reptiles, and uses its sense of hearing to locate prey. It can leap up to two metres above the ground to land on prey with its forefeet before killing its victims with a bite to the neck or the head. It can also grasp birds in mid-air as they try to fly off
— a spectacular sight indeed!
Both sexes become sexually mature when they are one to two years of
age and establish highly overlapping home ranges of 10 — 32km². Mating takes place at different times of the year in different parts of their range, but typically once or twice a year.The time when mating takes place varies geographically; births peak in winter in Botswana and toward the end of the dry season in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. After a gestation period of two to three months, a litter of one to four kittens is born.They will be weaned at about one month of age and begin hunting on their own at six months of age. They leave their mother at around a year old.
The Serval is vulnerable to intra-guild competition from many of Africa’s larger predators, especially Lions and Leopards. It will seek cover to escape their view. However, if the predator is very close, it immediately flees in long leaps, changing
its direction frequently. It is also an efficient, though not frequent, climber. Like many cats, the Serval can purr and also has a high-pitched chirp, and can hiss, cackle, growl, grunt, and meow.
TRUE WILDCAT
There are several major threats to the Serval’s survival including the degradation of wetlands and grasslands. Trade of Serval skins still occurs. In West Africa, the Serval has significance in traditional medicine and pastoralists will often kill Servals to protect their livestock, even though they generally do not prey on livestock.
The human/Serval association dates back to the time of Ancient Egypt and Servals are depicted as gifts or traded objects from
Nubia in Egyptian art. In April 1986, the first Savannah cat — a hybrid between a male Serval and a female domestic cat — was born; it was larger than a typical domestic kitten and resembled a Serval in coat pattern. Many readers of Your Cat will be fully aware of the controversy regarding this ‘breed’ and the difficulties of keeping such an animal fulfilled in a domestic home. The demands and behaviour of the ‘wild’ element of such hybrids always seems to predominate over the more relaxed domesticated side. Buying a Savannah is bringing the tooth and claw of half a wide ranging African predator into the home. What could this half African cat expect to get out of life with humans?
One time, we were working the Land Cruiser around the edge of an enormous, heaving, braying Wildebeest multitude on the Serengeti in northern Tanzania. Vultures were descending on the southern horizon and we were curious to see if Lions had perhaps despatched another victim. We rattled past a clump of dense grass and stunted thorn filled with noisy birds, all of them in an agitated frenzy. I asked our driver to stop so that I might discover the source of all this avian unrest, thinking that there must be a snake or a mongoose in that clump of grass. Imagine my surprise when a fully grown male Serval exploded from the thicket! He glared at us ruefully before trotting off toward infinity. Another majestic African feline surprise to mark another fantastic safari journey, and cat perfectly adapted to where it evolved to survive and thrive.
The Serval can purr...