Caracal
The caracal (Caracal caracal) is a wild cat of medium size, instantly recognizable by the long black tufts that tip its pointed ears. Adults stand roughly 40 to 50 cm at the shoulder and weigh between 7 and 19 kg, with males noticeably larger than females. Its coat is a plain tawny to reddish brown, and its long, muscular hind legs give it an explosive jumping ability that lets it pluck birds right out of the air. The species ranges across most of Africa, the Middle East and parts of Central and South Asia, living in savannas, dry woodlands, scrublands and rocky dry hills. It avoids dense tropical forest and the most extreme sand deserts. Mostly solitary and active at night and in twilight, it hunts hares, rodents, small antelopes and birds. The IUCN lists it as Least Concern, though it is rare in much of Asia and North Africa and faces persecution by farmers.
What is a caracal?
The caracal is a wild cat of medium size that lives in Africa, the Middle East and Central and South Asia. Its name comes from the Turkish karakulak, which means black ear, after the dark backs and long black tufts of its ears. In Persian and in parts of India and Pakistan it is called siyah gosh, with the same meaning. In English it is usually pronounced KAIR uh kal. Because of the ear tufts it is often called the desert lynx, but it is not a lynx: genetic studies place it in its own genus, Caracal, in a small group with the serval and the African golden cat. Cat specialists recognize three subspecies: one in southern and eastern Africa, one in North and West Africa, and the Asian caracal, which reaches from Arabia and Türkiye to India and Central Asia. People who search for the African caracal or the Asian caracal are looking at the same species, but the Asian populations are much rarer, and in several countries of Central Asia it is listed as endangered.
Size and appearance
The caracal is slender and long legged, with a short tail and big pointed ears. Adults stand about 40 to 50 centimeters at the shoulder. Males measure about 78 to 108 centimeters from nose to the base of the tail and usually weigh 8 to 19 kilograms, while females measure about 71 to 103 centimeters and weigh 7 to 16 kilograms. The tail adds only 18 to 34 centimeters. The coat is short and plain, from sandy and tawny to brick red, with a pale belly with faint spots, white marks around the eyes and mouth, and a dark line from each eye to the nose. The backs of the ears are black, and each ear ends in a tuft of black hair up to about 4 to 5 centimeters long. Very dark, almost black caracals have been reported now and then, but they are extremely rare and there is no well documented record of a truly black caracal, unlike the black leopards and black servals known from Africa.
Where do caracals live?
The caracal has one of the widest ranges of any wild cat of its size. It is found across most of Africa outside the central rainforest and the deepest Sahara, through North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and on into Türkiye, Iran, Pakistan, India and Central Asia, as far north as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and the deserts of southern Kazakhstan. Within this range it favors savannas, dry woodlands, scrublands and rocky hills in areas of low to moderate rainfall. It copes well with heat and drought and lives on the edges of deserts where other cats are absent, but it avoids dense tropical forest and the most extreme sand seas. In southern Africa it is still common and even lives on farmland and on the edge of Cape Town, while in the Middle East and Central Asia populations are scattered and poorly known. In India only small groups survive, mainly in Rajasthan and Kutch. Elevation is not a barrier, and caracals have been recorded above 3,000 meters in the mountains of East Africa.
What do caracals eat?
A versatile and opportunistic predator, the caracal takes a wide variety of prey depending on what is around. Across most of its range, small and medium mammals make up the bulk of its diet, including hares, hyraxes, rats, mice and small antelopes such as steenbok, duikers and young impala, and a big male can kill an animal two or three times its own weight. In southern Türkiye, studies have found that it also hunts young fallow deer and wild goats. Birds are hunted with remarkable skill: the caracal can launch itself into the air and strike birds as they take off, sometimes knocking down more than one in a single leap. Reptiles and insects add to the diet when larger prey is scarce. Near farms it sometimes takes sheep, goats and poultry, which brings it into direct conflict with people. It gets much of its water from its prey and can go a long time without drinking. Like most cats, it may come back to a large kill several times and hide the remains under bushes or even drag them into a tree.
How high can a caracal jump?
Few cats are as built for explosive movement as the caracal. Its back legs are long and powerful compared with its front legs, and the strong muscles of its lower back and hindquarters work like a loaded spring. From a crouch it can leap more than 3 meters straight up, and it uses that jump to catch birds such as doves, guineafowl and sandgrouse just as they lift off the ground, hitting them with its broad front paws. Caracals also climb trees well and can sprint fast over short distances. The black ear tufts are its best known feature, but their purpose is still debated. The most common idea is that caracals use them to communicate, since they flick their ears and move their heads so the tufts flutter, while other ideas say they may help keep flies away from the face or break up the outline of the head in tall grass. Its tawny coat blends with dry grass and red soil, and its large ears pick up the faint sounds of prey hidden in the bush.
Behavior and why caracals hiss
Solitary by nature, caracals come together only to mate, and each one keeps a territory that it marks with urine sprays, scent and scratch marks on trees and rocks. Activity peaks at night and in the hours around dawn and dusk, though in cooler months, in protected areas and in places where they are not disturbed they are also seen during the day. Hunting depends on stealth: the caracal creeps close to its target before a short, explosive rush. Like other small cats, caracals purr when they are relaxed and use meows, growls and hisses to show their mood. Hissing is one of the sounds people notice most, especially in videos of captive caracals, but for a wild cat it is simply a normal warning that says keep back, often given with the ears flattened. They also make a coughing bark that may help them keep track of each other at a distance. Home ranges vary a lot with habitat and prey, and studies in southern Africa have recorded male ranges from about 30 to more than 300 square kilometers.
Caracals and people: hunting cats, memes and the pet trade
People have kept caracals for a very long time. In Persia and India, rulers including the Mughal emperors trained them to hunt birds, hares and foxes, and contests were held to see how many pigeons a caracal could knock down in one leap. In recent years the caracal became famous online through Gosha, a caracal kept by a family in Moscow, whose photos turned into the Big Floppa meme in 2020. That fame has a cost. Caracals are not domesticated: even when raised by people they stay wild animals that spray urine to mark territory, need large spaces and a diet of whole prey, and can scratch and bite hard. Laws vary a lot. The Asian populations are listed in Appendix I of CITES, which bans their commercial trade, the African ones are in Appendix II, and many countries and states ban or tightly restrict keeping them. Animal welfare groups and sanctuaries regularly take in caracals given up by owners who could not cope, and buying one from a breeder keeps that trade going.
Conservation
The IUCN classifies the caracal as Least Concern because of its huge range and its healthy numbers in much of eastern and southern Africa, although its population trend is unknown in most places. Outside that region the picture is different. In North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, populations are small, scattered and under pressure from habitat loss and hunting, and the caracal is listed as critically endangered in the national Red Books of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. In India, where fewer than 100 may remain, it was added to the government's recovery program for critically endangered species in 2021. Across its range, the most common threat is retaliatory killing by farmers who lose sheep, goats and poultry, and in South Africa and Namibia large numbers are shot or trapped on farmland every year. Around Cape Town, a study published in 2026 found highly toxic rat poisons in 78 percent of 102 dead caracals tested. Guard dogs, protective collars for livestock and night enclosures can reduce losses without killing the cats.
Where it is found
The Caracal can be found in places such as:
