Bobcat

• 1. Introduction

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  The bobcat, Lynx rufus, has turned up in some surprising places. In early March 2010, animal control authorities captured one in a parking garage in downtown Houston. In 2018, another was captured on a tourist boat in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both animals belong to a medium-sized wild cat native to North America, which ranges from southern Canada through most of the contiguous United States to Oaxaca in Mexico. People also call it the wildcat, the bay lynx or the red lynx. How did a cat of the forest edge end up among parking decks and passengers? Why does it still thrive after generations of hunting for sport and fur? What did scientists argue about when they tried to sort one animal into a dozen kinds? And why did a people known as the Hopewell bury one with a necklace?

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• 2. Origins and Names

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  In 1777, Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber proposed the scientific name Felis rufa for the bobcat. Forty years later, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque added two more. His Lynx floridanus was a greyish lynx with yellowish brown spots from Florida. His Lynx fasciatus was a reddish brown lynx with thick fur from the northwest coast. Naturalists kept naming new forms from single skins and skulls. Clinton Hart Merriam described a female shot in the San Francisco Mountains. Outram Bangs described a male killed near Bear River, Nova Scotia. Randolph Lee Peterson and Stuart C. Downing described one killed near Port Arthur, Ontario. In 1963, George Goodwin based yet another on three skulls and six skins from the Mexican Tehuantepec District. In 1981, researchers challenged all of these names, because specimens from different regions differed only slightly. After the 2017 revision of cat classification, only two subspecies remained. Lynx rufus rufus lives east of the Great Plains, and Lynx rufus fasciatus lives west of them. The family tree behind them begins in Eurasia. The bobcat is thought to descend from the Eurasian lynx, which crossed the Bering Land Bridge during the Pleistocene, with ancestors arriving as early as 2.6 million years ago. The first wave moved into southern North America, where glaciers soon cut it off from the north. That isolated population became the modern bobcat around 20,000 years ago. A second wave from Asia settled in the north and became the Canada lynx. The two cats can still occasionally hybridize.

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• 3. Built for Camouflage

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  Among the four species of the genus Lynx, the bobcat is on average the smallest. Its coat runs from tan to grayish-brown, marked with black streaks on the body and dark bars on the forelegs and tail. That spotted pattern works as camouflage. Bobcats in the southwestern deserts have the palest coats, while those in the northern forests are the darkest. Kittens are born well-furred and already spotted. A few melanistic bobcats, which look black but may still show spots, have been sighted and captured in Florida and in New Brunswick, Canada. The ears are pointed and black-tipped, with short black tufts. Ruffs of long hair beneath the ears make the face look wide. The eyes are yellow with black slit pupils, and the nose is pinkish-red. The name comes from the tail, a stubby, black-tipped stub only 9 to 20 cm long. A whole adult measures from 47.5 to 125 cm, averaging 82.7 cm, and stands about 30 to 60 cm at the shoulder. Males weigh 6.4 to 18.3 kg, averaging 9.6 kg. Females weigh 4 to 15.3 kg, averaging 6.8 kg. The largest bobcat accurately measured weighed 22.2 kg, though unverified reports reach 27 kg. The heaviest animals live in eastern Canada and northern New England, and the lightest in the southern Appalachian Mountains. That pattern follows Bergmann's rule, under which animals grow larger in colder places. Senses are sharp, with good hearing, vision and smell. The cat climbs well, swims when it must, and normally avoids water. Its tracks show four toes and no claw marks, because the claws retract. As with all cats, the hind prints usually land exactly on top of the fore prints.

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• 4. Rivals and Range

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  By the 20th century, bobcats were thought to have vanished from southern Minnesota, eastern South Dakota and much of Missouri. Modern agriculture had reshaped the land. The cat copes with many settings, from the humid swamps of Florida to the deserts of Texas and rugged mountains. Only large, intensively cultivated tracts rule it out. Human numbers do not seem to limit it. Suitable habitat does. By 2010 it had recolonized so much ground that it occurred in every contiguous state except Delaware. One was killed near Albion, Michigan, in 2008, and sightings were confirmed in northern Indiana. If a dog chases it, it usually climbs a tree. Farther north, the limits are snow and a larger relative. The bobcat will not tolerate deep snow and waits out heavy storms in shelter. It lacks the large padded feet of the Canada lynx, so it cannot carry its weight across drifts as well. Yet it is no pushover. In Nova Scotia, the aggressive bobcat has been seen displacing the lynx. Clearing coniferous forests for farmland has pushed the lynx northward, to the bobcat's advantage. In Mexico, the bobcat lives in dry scrubland and in pine and oak forests, and its range stops short of the tropical south. Other animals threaten it too. In Yellowstone National Park, cougars and gray wolves have repeatedly been observed killing adult bobcats. Coyotes have killed adults and kittens. American alligators in the southeastern United States have been filmed preying on adult bobcats. Golden eagles have reportedly done the same. Kittens also fall to great horned owls, eagles, foxes, bears and adult male bobcats.

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• 5. Twilight Hunter

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  Each night the bobcat travels 2 to 7 miles along a habitual route. It is crepuscular, meaning most active at twilight. It moves from three hours before sunset until about midnight, then again from before dawn until three hours after sunrise. In fall and winter it becomes more active by day, following its prey, which does the same in colder weather. Rabbits and hares are its favorite meals. In the eastern United States that means the eastern cottontail and the New England cottontail. In the north it means the snowshoe hare. In the far south, cotton rats sometimes take their place. The bobcat is an opportunistic predator, unlike the more specialized Canada lynx, and its diet widens when its main prey declines. It also takes squirrels, moles, muskrats, mice, insects and small sharks. It even takes birds up to the size of an adult trumpeter swan, ambushing them while nesting. It hunts by stalking from cover or lying in wait, then pouncing. For geese, ducks, rabbits and hares, it waits until the prey comes within 20 to 35 ft before rushing in. Livestock are sometimes targets. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, bobcats killed 11,100 sheep in 2004, which was 4.9% of all sheep predator deaths. Some of that blame may be misplaced, since bobcats also scavenge the remains of kills made by other animals. Deer are a rare but striking target. A study in the Everglades found that 33 of 39 kills were fawns. In Yellowstone, 15 of 20 kills were elk calves. Prey up to eight times the bobcat's weight can be taken. It grabs the deer by the neck and bites the throat, the base of the skull or the chest. After eating its fill, it buries the carcass under snow or leaves and often returns to feed several times.

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• 6. Territory and Kittens

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  A study in Kansas found that resident male bobcats held home ranges of roughly 8 square miles. Females held less than half that area. Transient bobcats used about 22 square miles with poorly defined edges, and kittens used about 3. Across studies, home ranges vary from 0.23 to 126 square miles. The cat marks its territory with feces, urine and claw marks on prominent trees. Inside it keeps a main den and several auxiliary shelters, such as hollow logs, brush piles and spots under rock ledges. The main den smells strongly of bobcat. Unusually for cats, males tolerate overlap, while females rarely wander into other ranges. Two or more females may live inside a single male's range. Numbers also shift the balance of the sexes. An unhunted California population had 2.1 males per female. When density dropped, it fell to 0.86 males per female. Mating happens mostly in February and March. A dominant male travels with a female and mates with her several times, while other males may attend without taking part. Courtship brings screaming and hissing. Research in Texas found that animals without a home range had no identified offspring. The female raises the young alone. She gives birth in April or May, usually in a small cave or hollow log, after 60 to 70 days. A litter holds one to six kittens, usually two to four. Their eyes open by the ninth or tenth day, and they explore at four weeks. They are weaned at about two months. By fall of their first year they hunt alone and usually disperse. In Michigan, some have stayed with their mother until the next spring. A typical wild bobcat lives about seven years and rarely passes 10. The oldest wild one on record was 16, and the oldest captive lived to 32.

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• 7. Fur and Fragmentation

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  In the 1970s and 1980s, an unprecedented rise in the price of bobcat fur drew more hunters. By the early 1990s, prices had dropped sharply. Regulated hunting continues, and it accounts for half of the deaths in some populations. As a result, deaths pile up in winter, when hunting seasons are generally open. Even so, the species holds firm. Estimates from the US Fish and Wildlife Service put the US population between 700,000 and 1,500,000 in 1988. The bobcat has been listed as Least Concern by the IUCN since 2002. It sits in Appendix II of CITES, and the United States has petitioned to have it removed. Local pictures differ. The bobcat is considered endangered in Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey. Illinois removed it from its threatened list in 1999 and Iowa did so in 2003. Pennsylvania banned hunting and trapping from 1970 to 1999 and now allows limited hunting again. New Jersey gave it full legal protection by 1972, after commercial and agricultural development fragmented its habitat. The Mexican subspecies was delisted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2005. Between 2003 and 2011, sightings in the Everglades fell by 87.5%, a drop attributed to the invasive Burmese python. Cities pose a quieter problem. A study in coastal Southern California found that roads and development cut the links between bobcat populations, reducing their natural genetic diversity. Because bobcats need large home ranges, preserving open space matters. Parasites add to the toll. One study found an average Toxoplasma gondii infection rate of 52%. A mite called Lynxacarus morlani has so far been found only on the bobcat. In urban California, rat poison has been linked to secondary poisoning and to severe notoedric mange, since a weakened immune system fights mites poorly. Autopsies of bobcats that died of mange revealed chronic exposure to rodenticide. Suggested alternatives include vegetation control and traps.

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• 8. Stories and Burial

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  A Nez Perce story sets the bobcat and the coyote against each other as opposites. Another version of the tale treats them as equals and as identical. The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss argues that twins who represent opposites are a built-in theme of New World mythologies. He sees the equal version as the result of regular contact between Europeans and native cultures. He also notes that the opposing version is far more complex, while the version of equality seems to have lost the tale's original meaning. In a Shawnee tale, a rabbit outwits the bobcat. After trapping the rabbit in a tree, the bobcat is persuaded to build a fire, and the embers scatter across its fur and leave dark brown spots. The Mohave believed that dreaming often of certain beings or objects granted their powers. They thought dreaming of two deities, cougar and lynx, would give them the superior hunting skills of other tribes. European-descended Americans admired the cat for its ferocity and its grace. In the United States, it "rests prominently in the anthology of... national folklore". The strangest record comes from the ground. In the 1980s, excavations of dirt domes along the Illinois River uncovered a complete skeleton of a young bobcat. It wore a collar of bone pendants and shell beads, buried by the Hopewell culture. The bones were first taken for a puppy. The Hopewell normally buried dogs, but near the village, not inside the mounds. A tamed, cherished pet or a spiritual role may explain the burial. It remains the only decorated wild cat burial on the archaeological record. The animal lives on in a mascot too. At Ohio University, Rufus the Bobcat is named partly for the university's founder, Rufus Putnam.

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