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This furtive and winter-ready feline makes its home in almost every province and territory across Canada, but its furtive nature means most of us will never see one.
The Canada lynx is twice as large as an average house cat and far better equipped for winter, with long legs, thick fur, and big paws that act like snowshoes. You’ll rarely spot the secretive kitties — they make it their business to avoid humans — but out of Canada’s three wild felines, they’re the most common and widespread. Here are five more facts to know about one of our coolest cats, Lynx canadensis.
Here, Kitty
Lynx mostly inhabit Canada’s boreal forests, from coast to coast. That said, they’ll move into other, less heavily forested, areas as long as there’s enough prey to catch. Unlike some other wildlife, the lynx is considered remarkably tolerant of human presence. Anecdotal reports suggest they can adapt to living near communities, with few cases of animal-human conflict. They keep their distance: sometimes curious, but always aloof.
Their Numbers Are Up (And Down)
In the summer, lynx feast on small mammals and birds including rodents, grouse, and foxes, but almost half of their food comes in the form of snowshoe hares. And in the winter, hare can make up 75% of the carnivore’s diet, sometimes two per day. This close predator-prey relationship means that lynx numbers rise and fall in a roughly 10-year cycle along with hare numbers. Because hares reproduce quickly, their population in one area can increase until the habitat can no longer support them, and the population crashes. The lynx population follows this boom-and-bust pattern, lagging behind by one or two years.
Purrr-fect Senses
Lynx use a stalk-and-pounce technique when they hunt. They can jump nearly 4.5 metres from a standstill. They also have keen eyes, strong enough to spot a mammal as small as a mouse from 70 metres away, and designed for seeing in the dark. A lynx’s vision is so sharp that, allegedly, Europeans believed that their own native lynx could see through walls. (For the record, it can’t. Only Superman can do that.) A lynx’s stellar hearing also helps with locating prey. Along with pointy ear tufts that sense vibration, they have roughly 30 muscles in their ears, and can independently rotate them, like satellite dishes, in the direction of the soft noises their ear tufts have detected.
Meow Mixup
Lynx are easy to confuse with bobcats, a similar species with a more southern range in Canada. But you can think of the lynx as a souped up version of the bobcat. Lynx are typically larger and heavier, with longer legs, and extra wide, ultra furry paws. They have similar ear tufts, but the lynx’s are longer. Colour-wise, lynx are grey, while the fur of the bobcat is mottled brown. Bobcats, with a shorter gait, move similar to a domestic cat. Lynx have back legs that are even longer than their long front legs, so they appear hunched forward when they walk. It might look awkward, but their stilt-like limbs allow them to navigate areas with much deeper snow than bobcats. Score one for the tall guys.
A Chilly Romance
Lynx start mating in February and into early spring. Males abandon their solitary ways and begin actively searching for a mate. When they meet a rival male, the pair will sometimes engage in noisy, caterwauling matches — it sounds like women screaming at each other — as they fight for dominance. Pregnant females give birth to a litter of up to five kittens between May and June, hiding them under piles of brush or in hollow logs until, weaned, they’re old enough to learn to hunt the 6,570 (or so) Snowshoe Hares they’ll eat in their lifetimes. Pops doesn’t stick around to help with any of this child rearing. Once the lovemaking is over, the cat doesn’t come back.
