With most other cats, a simple plural will do — snow leopards, tigers, cheetahs.
Only one group of cats has a title like this: the lynxes.
There is affection in that as well as recognition of how widespread and unusual these sleek bearded cats are.
Their goblin faces peer out at us from a variety of natural settings all across Earth’s northern continents.
But each kind is unique and in its own way adorable, as this brief introduction of all four species shows —
Image by klaas huizenga from Pixabay, public domain.
Canada lynx
Lynx canadiensis uses its big snowshoe-like feet to chase snowshoe hares across the wintry landscapes of Alaska and — of course — Canada, where this lynx in the Yukon interacts with the one cameraman a bit!
We’ve shown this before on the blog, but it is amazing and one of the best video showcases of a wild Canada lynx in action.
And then there’s the older brother Bob Cat —
Raimer/Shutterstock
Bobcat
Lynx rufus is just as comfortable in backyards as in the wilds of most of the US and of Mexico down to Oaxaca State. In Florida bobcats are somewhat rare, but this 2023 video shows that they are back on Sanibel Island, which was almost completely submerged by Hurricane Ian in 2022:
Two more lynxes prowl around lands on the other side of the Atlantic —
Eurasian lynx
Lynx lynx, biggest of all, roams the enormous continent of Eurasia from its Atlantic to its Pacific coasts, and also ranges southward into the Himalayas and parts of the Middle East.
Disclosure: I chose this because it is so adorable and peaceful (head boops!) — and because the video in Fact 50., while awesome, is not adorable; it shows this big lynx species hunting in the Himalayas.
The last lynx is more of a stay-at-home, even though its lack of range helps to make it one of the most endangered cats on Earth —
Julie Yates/Shutterstock
Iberian lynx
Lynx pardinus of Spain (and recently reintroduced into Portugal) is slowly recovering from near extinction, thanks in part to this captive breeding and release program:
Now let’s check out three specific lynx facts!
49. Canada lynxes are the only cat that has population cycles mirroring its prey’s cycle.
If you or I ate like a Canada lynx, we would soon be dead — not from frostbite but from protein poisoning.
This is also known as “rabbit starvation” or “caribou sickness.”
Such high-protein, almost zero-fat meats sound ideal for a weight loss program, but the human body also requires other nutrients that are absent from rabbit, caribou, and a few other meats.
The Canada lynx does not have this problem.
It is a cat and therefore a hypercarnivore, getting seventy percent or more of its calories from meat.
All lynxes, in fact, enjoy the taste of rabbit, particularly the lynxes of Iberia and Canada.
These two will eat other food if rabbits become scarce, but there seems to be some dependency going on there as well:
- Only on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) do Europe’s wild rabbits live in numbers as high as those in North America. And only here will you find the Iberian lynx.
- Canada lynx range runs through Alaska, Canada, and parts of Washington State, Montana, Minnesota, and Maine — the exact same range as the snowshoe hare’s.
They’re not exactly rabbit addicts but both species have come to grief through their dietary habits.
The Iberian lynx
Predators everywhere, of course, stay where their prey lives and will move on or switch to something else whenever that prey disappears.
For some reason, the Iberian lynx could not do this in the twentieth century when disease almost wiped out rabbits on the peninsula.
That sudden loss of prey is a major reason why Iberian lynx are almost extinct now and why this cat’s conservation program also includes managing the regional rabbit population.
That was, hopefully, a one-time catastrophe for Spain’s lynx.
With Canada lynxes, it plays out differently.
A “hare-y” cycle
Snowshoe hares go through population peaks and declines every eight to eleven years.
Trapping records going back to the nineteenth century show that Canada lynx numbers do the same thing (after a short lag)!
Researchers find that, soon after hares start disappearing, lynxes — while hunting other prey, like squirrels, to survive — start having smaller litters, and sadly, most of those cubs die.
Female lynxes don’t breed as often, if at all, and all Canada lynx territories crash as individuals start ranging far and wide for food.
Then the hares start to increase again, and about a year later, the lynxes begin their comeback.
This happens over and over again, so regularly that authorities where sustainable fur trapping is allowed factor it into their decisions, issuing fewer licenses when Canada lynx numbers are on the down swing or close to their lowest point on the upswing.
No other member of Family Felidae today has this prey-based boom/bust cycle!
The Eurasian lynx, in fact, doesn’t focus on rabbits at all.
50. Eurasian lynxes live mostly on deer-sized prey.
With the help of drones, a team of wildlife specialists managed to film the very muscular Eurasian lynx hunting hoofed plant eaters up in snow leopard country, although with the stalk-and-ambush lynx there is much less leaping and racing around.
Predation scenes.
While most of the terrain in its broad range isn’t that rugged, this is what the buffest of lynxes does all across Eurasia.
No rabbits for them! — unless there’s nothing else around.
They are capable of taking down animals three to four times their size though usually go for smaller prey than that.
Up in the Himalayas, do the snow leopards mind?
Well, Eurasian lynxes usually weigh no more than 55 pounds — half as much as a snow leopard.
Two cats of different sizes can coexist.
Maybe that’s why Eurasian and Iberian lynx fossils from the Pleistocene have been found together in Central Europe.
Iberian lynxes today only reach a top weight of about 35 pounds — a little over half the max for a large Eurasian lynx.
Maybe coexistence was helped along, too, by the smaller lynx’s specialization on rabbits and hares — who knows?
The cats aren’t talking.
While evolution is a very complex thing and no part of it is ever as simple as it looks, the smaller Iberian lynx probably wasn’t a competitive threat to its Eurasian big brother, any more than the Eurasian lynx of today is competition for its larger relatives: snow leopards.
However, some people do see the Eurasian lynx as a threat to their property.
The Eurasian lynx is large enough to feed on game deer (including those on Europe’s trophy-hunting preserves) and similar-sized domestic livestock (which has not endeared it to farmers).
For this reason, the lynx was wiped out in the British Isles during medieval times and in much of Europe after that.
Conservationists now are reintroducing the Eurasian lynx in its former range, but they are meeting serious resistance.
Efforts are still underway to find common ground between these stakeholders, with their understandable concerns, and conservationists who understand the long-term value such an apex predator brings to any habitat.
51. Bobcats are the oldest member of the lynx group.
Historically, taxonomists have had a hard time herding lynxes.
As for the name, it used to apply to all medium-sized spotted cats!
Per Etymonline, the Greeks called them lyngx, which Romans turned into lynx and their south European descendants made it lince.
Then things got complicated.
The Old French version — lonce — went through various permutations, became “ounce” (uncia in Latin) and finally came to mean “snow leopard” (Panthera uncia)!
“Lynx” went on to become the name for the cats we know and love today, but Science was — and is — still puzzled.
Where did these goblin cats come from?
We’ll have to end on that question but it’s interesting to know that, for quite a while, lynxes were considered to be close relatives of the big cats.
It seems strange to anyone with just a slight acquaintance with these cats —
Oh. Right. (Image: Raimer/Shutterstock)
Thanks to molecular biology, today’s experts know that lynxes are not members of the genus Panthera, but fossil lynx ancestors are still few and far between.
As I understand it, genetic studies suggest that the lynx group started seven to twelve million years ago. Bobcats evolved in Pliocene times, three and a half to five million years ago, with the other three modern lynxes first appearing a little over a million years ago in the early Pleistocene epoch.
Why they evolved as goblin cats is another, much more debatable matter.
In any event, DNA research did move another small cat out of the lynx lineage where taxonomists had put it based on appearances.
Besides a rather lynx-like build, it has ear tassels that dwarf anything the goblin cats can come up with!
We’ll meet this African jumper next time…
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Flight To Wonder 