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Serval - Leptailurus serval
Topic Started: Jan 7 2012, 08:10 PM (5,838 Views)
Taipan
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Serval - Leptailurus serval

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Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Suborder: Feliformia
Family: Felidae
Subfamily: Felinae
Genus: Leptailurus
Species: Leptailurus serval

Geographic Range
Servals are found throughout the savannas of Africa. They are not found in arid desert regions, tropical rainforests, or along the western tip of South Africa.

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Subspecies
There are 14 recognised subspecies:
Leptailurus serval serval - Cape Province
Leptailurus serval beirae - Mozambique
Leptailurus serval brachyura - Servaline cat: Sierra Leone to Ethiopia
Leptailurus serval constantina - Algeria-Atlas
Leptailurus serval hamiltoni - East Transvaal
Leptailurus serval hindeio - Tanzania
Leptailurus serval ingridi - South Zimbabwe, Botswana, southwest Africa
Leptailurus serval kempi - Uganda
Leptailurus serval kivuensis - Congo and Angola
Leptailurus serval liposticta - North Angola
Leptailurus serval lonnbergi - South west Angola
Leptailurus serval mababiensis - North Botswana
Leptailurus serval robertsi - West Transvaal
Leptailurus serval togoensis - Dahomey and Togo

Habitat
Servals can be found in dry, open grasslands, wooded savannas, grassy uplands, and moist areas around rainforests. They do not occur in rainforests. Servals are almost always found near water.

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Physical Description
Mass : 8 to 18 kg; avg. 11 kg (17.6 to 39.6 lbs; avg. 24.2 lbs)

Serval have the largest ears and longest legs, relative to their body size, in the cat family. Body length ranges from 670 to 1000 mm, tail length from 240 to 450 mm, and shoulder height from 540 to 620 mm. Males are generally larger than females. Their remarkably long legs can constitute much of their height and are used to see over savanna grasses, aiding in prey detection. The auditory bullae and pinnae of the ear are enlarged to aid in the detection of prey that emit high frequency sounds. The ears are rounded with white stripes on the back and they rest on a small, elongate head. The pelage is reddish-brown with dark spots that may merge into stripes along the back. There is regional variation in coloration. Serval that inhabit wetter areas have finer markings and those that inhabit drier areas have fur with large, bold spots.

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Reproduction
Number of offspring : 1 to 4; avg. 2.35
Gestation period : 67 to 77 days; avg. 74 days
Birth Mass : 263 g (average) (9.26 oz)
Time to weaning : 39 days (low)
Age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female) : 821 days (average)

Little is known about the mating behavior of servals. Mating is not seasonal. During estrous males and females will hunt and rest together for several days. Gestation lasts from 65 to 75 days. On average 3 young are born per litter.

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Behavior
Servals are solitary animals that primarily communicate through urine spraying and rubbing saliva on objects. They also communicate using vocalizations such as shrill cries, growls and purring.

Confrontation between servals is usually avoided, but can occur when home ranges overlap. Servals will take cover when surprised. When threatened directly they will raise their tail and flee using sudden direction changes and leaping.

Servals are primarily crepuscular. Their peak activity times are between ten and eleven at night and four and five in the morning.

Hunting and bringing food back to the young takes up a majority of the day for a female serval. While she is gone the kittens are hidden in a den built with thick, tall grass. Mothers will hunt for male kittens only until they are able to hunt on their own. Mothers will tolerate female kittens for longer periods. This may be why more females than males in overlapping home ranges are closely related.

Food Habits
Servals are carnivorous, their diet consists primarily of hares, mole rats, ground squirrels, vlei rats, quails, gueleas, frogs, and flamingos. They catch their prey by leaping and landing on their victims with both front paws. They also have the ability to reach into deep holes or enter the water to catch prey. If a serval misses its prey after the first try it will generally move on. When a prey is caught it will generally be played with before it is eaten. Servals are very efficient hunters due to their ability to leap up to ten feet into the air and due to their ability to swerve and change direction at full speed. They are so efficient that on average 40% of pounces during the day and 59% of pounces during the night are successful.

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Economic Importance for Humans: Negative
Servals have been known to prey upon domestic fowl.

Economic Importance for Humans: Positive
Servals are hunted for their coat, as a result they have been exterminated from the areas of their range with higher human populations.

Ways that people benefit from these animals:
body parts are source of valuable material.

Conservation Status
IUCN Red List: Least Concern.
US Federal List: No special status.
CITES: Appendix II.
As many as fourteen serval subspecies exist. The northern subspecies is listed as endangered while all others are listed as threatened. Servals are protected by international law.
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Taipan
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Serval feasts on mamba

06 Jul, 2007

A serval cat feeds on a snake she has just killed – an uncommon sight, especially as the snake is a deadly black mamba.

You may ask yourself what a serval is – and with good reason. This uncommon, secretive spotted feline is seldom seen, especially at such close range and during the day, as it’s mostly nocturnal. It is one of the smaller, more elegant cats, with relatively large ears, which it uses to locate its prey.

This particular serval let us get very close. She had just killed a black mamba and was busy feeding.

What makes this sighting very special is that there have rarely been recordings of servals feeding on snakes, and in this case the snake happened to be one of the quickest and deadliest of snake species.

We assume that the serval didn’t receive a fatal bite as her respiration seemed regular and being fairly small, the venom would have worked very quickly.

Serval tend to prefer savannah-type conditions and prey primarily on small rodents and birds.

What initially alerted us to this serval was the incessant mobbing by arrowmarked babblers and tree squirrels. Serval are known to take quite a few different bird species. With their long legs, they are easily capable of plucking them out of the air, up to a height of at least 2m (6’5”).

After some time with this female serval, she stood up and casually walked off, whereupon we moved in for a closer inspection of the mamba. It was a fairly large snake, probably measuring up to 1,5m (4’ 9”) before being eaten.[/size]

http://www.earth-touch.com/result.php?i=Serval-feasts-on-mamba

There's a video at the above website.

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Serval v Puff adder

Here's a Serval catching a Puff Adder :



The Puff Adder is Africas most dangerous snake - "Its wide distribution, common occurrence, large size, potent venom, and willingness to bite make it responsible for more fatalities than any other African snake".
"The average size is about 1 m in length and very stout. Large specimens of 190 cm (75 in), weighing over 6.0 kg (13.2 lbs) and with a girth of 40 cm (16 in) have been reported."


Another serval killing a puff adder and it looks like a good sized one as well


Felines kill snakes just like how secretary birds do it, raining blows down on to the head, plus i think its a lot harder for the snake to bite the fast moving paw.
Edited by Taipan, May 6 2012, 03:26 PM.
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Mauro20
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Interesting interaction.

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Taipan
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Serval Kill
Looking through the camera photos when they come in is an exciting time, you never have any idea what might be on there. We change the SD cards weekly, and anything can happen in a week! When looking through this week, we found something that is very rare to see, a serval with a kill. Normally, serval will kill rodents and other small animals, they are even able to snatch insects out of the air! However, this serval was clearly very hungry as the antelope in its jaws is probably the same size, if not slightly bigger than the cat! It is very unusual to see this and to get it on camera is really amazing, but that cat will probably not be hungry again for a while.

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http://predatorresearchnews.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/serval-kill.html
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HerpestidaeB4Cat
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is it true that they are like cheetahs not built for fighting built for hunting? i mean do they have similir builds to the cheetahs .. that is what i been hearing.. so that would mean their claws are semi retractable
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Taipan
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Exclusive: Rare Black Wildcat Caught on Film in Africa
Servals are normally tan with black spots, but an unusually dark animal in Kenya surprised photographer Sergio Pitamitz.


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Little is known about the Kenyan black serval (photographed February 18), including its sex.
PHOTOGRPAH BY SERGIO PITAMITZ

By Christine Dell'Amore
PUBLISHED MARCH 22, 2017

For Sergio Pitamitz, seeing a black cat was a stroke of luck.

While leading a photography tour in Lualenyi Camp, a private game reserve near Kenya's Tsavo West National Park, on February 18, Pitamitz noticed a dark spot moving in the grass. His vehicle stopped, and he waited.

Within a few minutes, a jet-black serval—a wildcat with a normally cheetah-like coat—ambled into view of the shocked group before disappearing back into the bush.

"When you do wildlife photography, you’re always searching for something rare and strange," says Pitamitz. "It was absolutely incredible."

The animal is melanistic—its genes carry a mutation that creates more dark pigment than light pigment, according to Eduardo Eizirik, a biologist and cat-melanism expert at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil.

Though melanism is common enough among wildcats—it's reported in 13 of the 38 known species—the trait seems to be relatively rare in servals: There are just six records of black servals in the scientific literature, all from Kenya and Tanzania, Eizirik says.

IN THE BLACK

The most famous melanistic cat is the black panther, an umbrella term that encompasses dark-furred leopards in Asia and Africa and inky jaguars in South America.

Eizirik and colleagues have discovered eight distinct mutations that lead to melanism in cats, and all seem to have evolved independently. (The puma, or mountain lion, lacks the gene that causes melanism.)

But why melanism evolved in cats is a trickier question.

It's possible that a black coat offers some melanistic cats camouflage as they hunt—especially in dimly lit habitats. For instance, black panthers are plentiful in the dense rain forests of peninsular Malaysia but not in the deserts of Central Asia.

In sunny climes, evolution may have selected against melanism, since a black coat could overheat the animal, Eizirik says.

Though there's no obvious reason for the Kenyan serval to develop melanism, Eizirik suspects the recently seen feline does just fine, laying low by day and hunting at night.

FELINE “OWL” ON THE PROWL

Known as the owls of the cat family, servals are nocturnal hunters that use their oversize ears to pick up on rodents rustling in high grass, says Jim Sanderson, a small-cat expert and program manager at the Texas-based Global Wildlife Conservation.

Servals "can leap very high, and with their long forelegs and sharp claws secure a rodent before they can react," Sanderson says in an email.

Widespread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the species is not endangered, but its nighttime habits make it seldom seen on safari.

That’s why Pitamitz considers himself doubly fortunate: "You can imagine [how hard it is to see] a serval" during a photo tour, he says. "A black serval is almost impossible."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/black-serval-kenya-melanism-cats/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20170322news-serval&utm_campaign=Content&sf65129066=1

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