Serval

Description:

Listed as Least Concern by the IUCN. The serval occurs widely through sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of tropical rainforest and the Saharan desert (Nowell and Jackson 1996). North of the Sahara, there are recent records from Morocco (Cuzin 2003) and from northern Algeria (K. De Smet pers. comm.). They went extinct in Tunisia, but a population has been reintroduced into Feijda N.P. (K. De Smet, in Hunter and Bowland in press), with animals of East African stock (F. Cuzin pers. comm.).

Habitat:

In sub-Saharan Africa, servals are found in well-watered savanna long-grass environments and are particularly associated with reedbeds and other riparian vegetation types. They also range up into alpine grasslands, up to 3,800 m on Mount Kilimanjaro (Nowell and Jackson 1996; Hunter and Bowland in press). Servals can penetrate dense forest along waterways and through grassy patches, but are absent from the rainforests of Central Africa, and from desert environments. In North Africa, they are found from semi-desert to cork oak forest on the Mediterranean coast (De Smet 1989; Cuzin 2003). Servals are able to tolerate agricultural areas provided cover is available (Hunter and Bowland in press), and may also benefit from forest clearance and the resulting encorachment of savanna at the edges of the equatorial forest belt (Ray et al. 2005). Serval specialize on small mammals, in particular rodents, with birds of secondary importance (Hunter and Bowland in press).

Notes:

Photos of a captive serval used for education programs at Wildlife Associates in Half Moon Bay, CA (not open to the public).