This Morning we Released a young male Serval that was caught on a nearby Resort. He was the brought to Sondela Nature Reserve to join the rest of our wide variety of felines on Sondela.
Description: The Serval is a medium sized feline with black spots on a golden orange coat. Much like the Cheetah, Servals also have "tear-marks" on their faces. Males are much larger than females though the most common size for them would be 59-92 cm. Females weight in at about 7-12kg's and the males at 9-18kgs. Servals have the longest legs of all cats, which is interesting because of their short slender bodies.
They have many Subspecies which include:
-Leptailurus Serval Serval, Cape Province.
-Leptailurus Serval Beirae, Mozambique
-Leptailurus Serval Brachyurus, East Africa, Ethiopia and Sahel.
-Leptailurus Serval Hindei, Tanzania
Hunting and Diet: Servals are Nocturnal and thus hunt mostly at night unless disturbed by humans or larger nocturnal predators. Although the Serval is designed to mostly catch Rodents it can also hunt Lizards, Birds, Hyena's, Gazelle, Springbok and Hares.
After we had a quick lesson on Servals and their behaviour we released the animal back into the wild and like a gunshot he took off into the direction of the Resort of where he origionally came from. After much excitment and pictures we returned back to the Academy to continue with our work.
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