When you first explore the wild areas of Africa, your mind naturally makes you think about the large charismatic species and many of us think about the beautiful big cats such as the lion, leopard and cheetah. Seeing and photographing lions is not difficult when you visit one of the famous big reserves, although seeing lions and leopards doing something special and exciting like killing prey or courting is not easy, since much of the stalking and killing action takes place at night or during the twilight hours. Far too often I have arrived soon after dawn at a kill that lions have made and missed the actual hunt. Cheetahs, on the other hand, are diurnal and if you go to a place where there are cheetahs in abundance, get information about when they last fed, and sit quietly and watch at a good distance, you should see a hunt and, with some good fortune, a kill. It is a spectacular sight and many of us are keen to go back and see more and photograph other cats on the African plains.
The rodent killing machine: The Serval
Unlike the caracal and the other cat species, the serval is not considered rare or threatened, but you need to be in the right habitat and search slowly and carefully. Looking in places where servals have been seen recently is good. The older females have smaller territories and if they have bred successfully, retain the territory from year to year, then these are the best individuals to find and photograph. One of the things about cats, and indeed many other animals, is that a small proportion of the females produce the majority of the young in the next generation,
so if you can find one of these super-mums you will probably find her again and you could watch as she hunts and feeds her young. They invariably inhabit long grass close to permanent water areas, and they use traditional paths and routes to hunt. In the Serengeti, they hunt a great deal during the daylight hours but in agricultural land they are mostly nocturnal. In the short grass plains of Tanzania you can find them in the nearby woodlands, close to wetlands. Even in good habitat, the males have big territories of 40km2 while the females will have much smaller territories of about 7km2 and typically these territories exclude all adults of the same sex.
They are rodent-killing machines and highly adapted at listening for the rustle of a mouse and then using their remarkably long legs to launch themselves high into the air – jumping as high as 2 meters while travelling forward distances of more than 3 meters. The pounce aims to drop the serval straight onto the mouse, either stunning it or giving a good purchase while the serval eats it. Getting photographs of a hunting Serval in mid-air or even swishing through the long grass carrying one of their babies to a new den site are the ultimate photos most of us seek.
Conservation: what is happening to serval outside protected areas?
The IUCN record these species as one of “least concern” since they are widely recorded across east and southern Africa, but we really don’t know much about the cat’s biology outside the protected areas. We do know that they are having a really tough time in North Africa where they have probably been wiped out in Algeria, reintroduced into Tunisia and in a very bad way in Morocco. Without question the biggest threat to the serval is the drainage and loss of wetland habitats in Africa as urban areas increase and every square meter of land gets turned into food producing areas. Africa has lost at least 30% of its wetlands since 1970 and this coupled with agricultural intensification and the loss of long grass habitat has effectively removed the serval habitat from large areas.
Without question, changes in land use and alteration in habitat is one of the biggest drivers of species extinction outside protected areas. Species like the serval inhabit patches of wetland habitat close to permanent water bodies where there are good densities of rodents. Across the huge expanse of the Serengeti plain the serval will live in these small habitat patches and when they produce young, they must disperse from one patch to another. Indeed these stepping-stones of habitat are important outside the protected areas as they help to link the large fragmented populations together and keep the population viable against extreme events such as dry years with little rodents. In effect the agricultural areas around protected areas act as buffer zones and the future of the animals very much depend on a serval population sustained in these areas.
The servals that live outside the protected areas get some benefit from being away from the larger carnivores. In many ecosystems, the larger predators will hunt down and kill the smaller predators, so for example it is not unusual to see the wolves in Yellowstone chase and kill a coyote or see lions in the Serengeti kill the baby cheetah.
In a similar way, leopards have been seen killing servals in Africa, so the servals inhabiting agricultural land will get protection from the big predators.
This is known in science as “meso-predator release” and is basically an increase in the abundance and distribution of the smaller carnivores when the apex predators are absent. Inside the protected areas the servals battle against the big carnivores and outside they battle against the fragmentation of wetland habitat.
The issue facing the serval is whether it has sufficient habitat outside the protected areas to keep the population going in the larger countryside. Our concern is that the wetland habitat and their associated rodents are being lost at a fast rate and this could jeopardize the survival of the serval.
There is a clear need to have a closer look at the status of the serval and how well it is surviving in the African countryside outside protected areas and then review its IUCN status
