The major threat to bobcats throughout the US is being hunted for their soft fur, in some areas to near extinction. Where bobcats now must share their natural habitat with increasing numbers of people, they are also hunted by farmers to protect their livestock. Despite being very adaptable animals, they are also threatened by habitat loss when populations are pushed into smaller and more dispersed areas of their once huge natural range.
Bobcat Bay lynx, Red lynx. Life Span. Photos with Bobcat. Distribution The bobcat has a wide range, from British Columbia, eastwards through southern Canada to Nova Scotia, and southwards through most of the US to central Mexico. Geography Continents. North America. Canada, Mexico, United States. Biome Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest.
Temperate grasslands. Tropical dry forest. Temperate coniferous forest. Tropical coniferous forests. Climate zones Arid. Habits and Lifestyle The bobcat is a nocturnal and solitary animal, most active under cover of night and tending to do most of its hunting during dawn and dusk. Group name. Terrestrial, Cursorial, Mesopredator. Diet and Nutrition Bobcats living in the north mainly eat snowshoe hares, while those living in the south will mainly eat cottontail rabbits. Diet Carnivore.
Population Trend. Least concern LC. Population Population threats The major threat to bobcats throughout the US is being hunted for their soft fur, in some areas to near extinction.
Over the past several years, she's been collecting data on bobcats—specifically, those that now reside in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Here, their population has been steadily rising , particularly in suburban neighborhoods. Far away from Texas, bobcats have also established themselves along the outskirts of Denver and Los Angeles. Interestingly, it looks like this urban lifestyle is turning the cats into night owls. Research conducted in the Los Angeles area shows that local bobcats are more fully nocturnal than their rural counterparts.
This makes the big city felines less likely to encounter humans. Furthermore, L. Back in the s, the remains of a very young bobcat—which were originally misclassified as a puppy—were discovered beneath a year-old grave in western Illinois. The plot in question was part of a much larger burial site created by a village aligned with the Hopewell Culture , a widespread group of related peoples who generally lived in small, isolated farming villages.
Traditionally, when someone in a Hopewell community died, the deceased was laid to rest in a burial mound. While dog burials are known, they were in the villages, not the mounds. I'd give anything to know why. Given these clues, some experts speculate that the animal was once a beloved pet. The earliest known member of the Lynx genus evolved in Africa around 4 million years ago. Known to paleontologists as the Issoire lynx, this creature had a more housecat-like appearance than its modern relatives do, courtesy of the now-extinct cat's shorter limbs and proportionally bigger skull.
Over time, the Issoire lynx spread northward into Eurasia. From there, it crossed the Bering Strait and entered North America. Today's bobcats are descended from these Old World colonizers. Being a hunter doesn't guarantee that you, in turn, will never be hunted. Owls, foxes , and coyotes regularly make off with bobcat kittens. Cannibalism is another big problem for these helpless infants, which are sometimes gobbled up by wandering adults usually males who belong to their own species.
Fully grown bobcats don't have many natural predators, although mountain lions have been known to kill those that encroach on their territory. But in recent years, the short list of carnivores that eat bobcats has grown one entry longer. Since , a Burmese python epidemic has been constricting the Florida Everglades.
For decades, exotic pet owners have released a steady stream of these Asian snakes into the region, where they now thrive.
Capable of weighing pounds, the pythons are large enough to consume dogs, deer, and even alligators. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at least one euthanized specimen has been found with a bobcat corpse in its stomach [ PDF ]. Pythons are also devouring the animals that bobcats depend upon for survival, including rabbits, raccoons, and rodents.
Not coincidentally, the number of bobcat sightings in the Everglades fell by According to MascotDB. On top of the more conventional parasites, bobcats sometimes host Lynxacarus morlani , a kind of mite that has never been seen targeting any other animal species.
What do you do with an unwanted gift? Smoky the bobcat stayed at the White House for a time before the Coolidges eventually handed him off to a zoo. Lynx rufus can sprint faster than any human being, but the cats also know when to slow things down.
In , two naturalists reported seeing a wild bobcat take 13 minutes to crawl across just 3. At the time, the predator was sneaking up on a cotton rat—which it was able to capture thanks to its patient approach. Schoolteacher Audrey Carrel of Peterborough, New Hampshire, led the charge to pass this legislation with her fourth and fifth-grade students.
After birth, the young stay in the den for the first two months. The mother starts bringing prey to the kittens at the end of the first month. Once kittens emerge from the den, she shows them how to hunt while still providing them with food. By 11 months of age, the kittens are kicked out of mom's territory. Bobcat populations plummeted during the early 20th century because of the popularity of their fur. Since then, successful conservation measures led to the IUCN listing them as a species of least concern.
The U. However, 38 states, seven Canadian provinces, and Mexico allow for some types of bobcat hunts. Thousands of bobcats are harvested for the fur industry each year, invasive pythons in Florida are decreasing their numbers in the Sunshine State, and rodenticides kill bobcats as they consume targeted species. Bobcats run at speeds of up to 30 mph. They are more sprinters than distance runners, as they only run for short distances when attempting to capture prey. Their hunting running gait is another way that a bobcat lives up to its name: they sometimes run like a rabbit, placing their hind feet in the same place as their front feet.
This style of running creates a bobbing appearance when they run. Kelly, M. Rockhill, Aimee P. Hansen, Kevin. Bobcat: Master of Survival. Oxford University Press, Bale, Rachael. Published January 15, Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile.
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