Reader Barry sent in this beautiful picture of a serval (Leptailurus serval) tw**ted by Planet Earth. It was so statuesque and dignified that I just had to post it. As you can tell, these cats have the longest legs relative to their body size of any felid.
Servals are savanna cats, widely distributed in sub-Saharan Africa. The green shows their range.
Wikipedia notes that white servals have been known, but only in captivity (and probably due to inbreeding). This looks like a case of leucism rather than true albinism:
Here’s a domestical serval (NOT RECOMMENDED AS PETS) jumping:
Finally, here’s a woman playing with Zeus, her pet serval. It shows how they can interact with humans, but again I would never want nor recommend these as pets. Besides, some day that woman’s gonna get nommed.
Bengals are bad enough, this is just silly!
Savannah cats. Serval domestic hybrids.
Savannah cats are bred from servals and domestic cats. Lovely, companionable creatures with a higher vertical leap than Michael Jordan
I notice the woman [Morgan?] with a serval pet has another Youtube channel:-
LasVegasBarbie
“Just a girl who Models in Vegas Loves her Family and makes YouTube Videos” dealing with important issues of the day such as twerking & relationships…
I believe servals can live twenty years. It makes me sad that such an energetic wild animal is kept in a tiny LV home with what appears to be a small yard [garden]. Also she has two children & I wonder is it smart having a serval?
Or is it the domestic hybrid mentioned above?
My understanding is that it’s very hard to tell an F1 savanna from a serval. But the F1 savannas run upwards of $20k and are treated as “undomesticated” in many states (I don’t know about Nevada) and are illegal if you don’t have a license.
The F3-5 savannas are not that much larger than an avaerage house cat, but are still great leapers. They also tend to make serval noises rather than domestic cat noises.
Can you tell I’ve researched this?
There was a young serval – I suppose semi- domesticated- climbing around the rafters of the open-sided dining hall in Tanzania when I was visiting one of the parks in the 70s. I unfortunately missed seeing it leap up there.
It just occurred to me that it was a caracal and not a serval that I saw up in the rafters, still very cute.
Such a striking animal! Noble indeed.
The few I have been lucky to see in the wild are just plain odd looking at some angles – they have a ‘stretched’ look about them that is almost ungainly. And then they move and ungainly is certainly not the word. I imagine that maned wolves from S.America have the same quality – they look slightly awkward and attenuated in photos too. Very, very cool.
I find the same thing true of Cheetahs, as well. (Not that I’ve seen them in the wild, alas.)
I wonder if it’s been declawed?
The white serval in the photo is one of two living at Big Cat Rescue in Florida. I met them in 1999. They were lovely, with glowing white coats and silvery spots. Definitely leucistic, not albino – they have normal eyes and the coat patterns are present, just lighter in color.
BCR recently acquired a serval-caracal hybrid from a defunct sanctuary.
Servals can be melanistic (all black), too. Here’s a PLOS ONE article on melanism in wild cats:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0050386
I don’t see anything wrong with having such a cat as a pet. They’re not endangered, so you’re not at risk of putting stresses on a small wild population. They’re smaller than many species of domestic dog.
I wouldn’t recommend leaving any alone with small children for many generations in domestication, but that’s the only real caveat.
Overall, I really object to the notion (whether explicit or implied) that we should restrict our animal companion interests to those species which were domesticated in the deep past. There’s nothing wrong with having a go at domesticating a new species today, so long as the effort doesn’t hurt wild populations.
If it wouldn’t be obscenely expensive to feed, I’d even consider a pet cheetah quite reasonable, provided you have the space. They’re naturally non-aggressive towards humans, and still smaller than a number of large dog breeds. Like many large dogs, I’d recommend keeping them outside (think of the furniture damage that a cheetah could do with its claws), with the appropriate weather protection. The only big caveat is that you’d need to regulate any potential cheetah pet trade, since their wild population is not in the best of shape. I’d want to see a domestic breeding program supplying all pet cheetahs, if such a thing ever caught on.
Thanny, are you a young person? I do not mean to offend, but your sentiment about cheetahs is something a 20-something person might have. I bet big cat rescue organizations would try to sway you from this opinion. Cheetahs would require lots of specialized care, for a long time. I don’t think most people are aware of the work and commitment, and history has shown that when the novelty wears off there is an animal disposal problem which the organizations are constantly dealing with.
You can end up with a lot of behavioral problems. Even with dogs and cats, rescue organizations are dealing with so much that individuals burn out after a few years. I have seen so many cases of abuse due to lack of socialization that you wouldn’t believe it.
I did some research into wolf-dog hybrids years ago and it turns out the litter can contain the full spectrum of animals. Wolves cannot be potty trained. You never know what you will get.
Putting a large mammal in a large cage and feeding it is just not enough, unless it is a reptile or insect maybe. After the novelty wears off, it becomes just a chore each day to take care of the animal. Even keeping a dog chained up in the back corner of the yard is in most cases abuse because they are such social animals. I’ve seen scores of dog rescue cases and the breed rescue people burn out after a few years.
YouTube unfortunately encourages people to show off their exotic pets… surely you saw the slow loris pet controversy a couple months ago, instigated by a youtube video that on the surface looked cute but was in fact not what it appeared. This week on PBS’ Nature program you can watch a full hour on what happens with pet parrot that develop problems. You might look it up. I myself have seen two fully-naked feather-picking parrots. These things live for 50-75 years like this. Or they are put down. It’s a real shame.
I’ve seen so much heartbreak, so much money and human resources spent on helping the animals that people mess up. I have (had) a pet-related business and am so incredibly tired of the percentage of donation requests I get (got) from pet rescue organizations needing money. All I hear anymore is how no one can afford my service because of their resources being consumed by charities. My having to say no all the time, and feeling like a heel, is itself absolutely exhausting.
Just thought I’d weigh in on some things. It’s hard to know who is reading this, and what their experience is with animals, so I don’t want to judge or preach.
Excellent comment, Jesse. A serval is a wild animal, as are cheetahs even though they used to be kept for hunting like dogs for hunting, by Maharajas and other rich people in India and in Arabia. Wild animals belong in the wild, in their own environment. Wild animals kept as pets can be very dangerous and unpredictable, too.
Yes, the cheetah used in hunting by humans… amazing and very historically fascinating. I think the romance of this idea is what fuels some people to want to own similar animals, even though they don’t live in the wide open spaces of the desert or plains.
Everyone knows about the neurotic Border Collies who end up in shelters because the urban people who bought them didn’t realize the very thing they were bred for causes them to get in big trouble if you don’t GIVE them things to do.
You’ve created a pretty bloated strawman for my position there.
I wrote, “provided you have the space”. A reasonable person reading that would not tack on to the end the phrase, “for a cage”.
People mistreat standard pets (cats and dogs) all the time. Talking about a pet serval or cheetah changes nothing. Each individual would-be pet animal has its own set of requirements for care and feeding. Either you’re prepared to meet them or you aren’t.
Each individual in a pure domestic breed has a different personality as well. There are tiny little pure domestic dogs with absolutely nasty temperaments.
What you’re really doing is taking the position that there’s a sharp line between wild and domestic animals. That’s a mystical position, not a rational one. Making pets of tamer wild animals and breeding them is what creates domestic species.
I’m saying we shouldn’t be shy about repeating the process. We can be quite a bit more deliberate and intelligent about it than our ancestors were.
But you seem to think I’m saying we should stick cheetahs right next to goldfish in the pet shop, which is a position sprung entirely from the baggage you brought with you into the discussion.
Hi, I agree with you that I brought baggage. Everyone does. Some people might call it experience or knowledge, or the wish to inform people about things they might not be aware of.
My reply was not meant to be as much a personal interaction as it was meant to provide additional info so that someone reading this _later_ would have their interest piqued– and maybe do some research of their own and make their own informed decisions. In my experience on the internet, a lot of people don’t go any further than one click.
a woman in MA owned a cross-bred serval/DSH cat and had to move to RI.MA has a law against ‘owning’ a serval.
I think people should be content with domesticated animals instead of buying a status symbol/keeping a wildcat that might be endangered.
By the way, watch “Parrot Confidential” on PBS, now showing, for info.on importation of and ownership of parrots, including how many people get tired of them to overwhelmed shelters.
In evolutionary terms, I suppose the serval is to felids what the maned wolf (the “fox on stilts”) is to canids – a lean, fast, big-eared grassland species with ultra-long legs.
Americans are terrible at having most exotics as pets. They get them because they’re “cute” and there will be someone who will sell them whatever they want. So now we have chinchillas, reptiles, hedgehogs, every species of monkeys, prairie dogs, loris, etc. in homes. And usually with just a human to interact with, not even another member of their species. And most of these folk have no idea what they’re getting into and often abandon these pets.
But America has Florida to release unwanted pets into, where they seem to be doing pretty well! Why not add servals as well? (joke, just in case)
Where I live (south of Chicago)I have been seeing coyotes now on a regular basis, once even at my front window in the middle of the afternoon. Which gives gun lovers just one more excuse to shoot at something new. And they sometimes have a hard time telling the difference between a dog or coyote or… most anything.
“Not recommended as pets”
Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull), another famous cat lover, would seem to agree:
“Hunt By Numbers”
Hey little buddies.
Soft and silky night walkers.
Dangerous species.
Tiptoe menace long grass stalkers
On my bed.
No butter melting in your jaws.
Bonding monster.
Lethal weapon wearing claws.
Let’s go out to hunt by numbers.
Tabby, spotted, black as coal.
Serval, Margay, Caracal.
Moggie in the moonlight listens.
Whiskered sensory miracle.
Felis, befriend us.
Egyptian Mau, Freya’s familiar.
Long in the future.
Cloned disciples, the castle guard.
Now, let’s go out and hunt by numbers.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A-vss3oqjoo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DA-vss3oqjoo
(I hope this doesn’t imbed)
Watch the video.
(He’s even uglier than Jerry (D )
…oops, smily fail 😀
That’t a really hilarious comment.
I doubt a serval would nom an adult human, but I sure wouldn’t keep ’em as pets. Cheetahs are probably far better as pets, but I wouldn’t encourage that for other reasons. Like most animals, even domesticated cheetahs should be treated as very dangerous animals and kept far away from children. Servals are gorgeous cats, but not pets.
Beautiful cat. I love caracals too.