African Caracal Cat (Caracal caracal) Facts

Excerpt:

Many small wild cat species – like caracals – face threats from widespread habitat loss, poaching and conflict with people, but they are highly cryptic and therefore understudied.

Scientists have recognised the potential of widespread internet usage and harnessed it in a range of ways.

We found that social media is an effective way to raise conservation awareness about wildlife living on the urban edges. We hypothesise that posts to our social media pages are popular because caracals are beautiful, charismatic cats that look very similar to their domestic relatives. The internet is already primed to receive cat content, and the project our research is based on has delivered.

Our research shows that the hard work and effort of continuous science communication on research projects through social media channels pays off – it can successfully aid robust research and raise conservation awareness for underrepresented species in rapidly changing landscapes.

Read the full article at:

Cat videos and wild caracals: how the internet’s viral trends can help conservation

by Gabriella Leighton - Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Cape Town, South Africa

and Laurel Serieys - Post-doctoral Fellow - University of California, USA and Institute for Communities and Wildlife, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Summary:

• A recent study finds that a group of caracals in South Africa has become regular seabird hunters, including eating endangered Cape cormorants and African penguins.
• The dietary shift is the result of generations of large-scale changes made to the Cape Peninsula by humans, predominantly since the arrival of the first European settlers.
• The changing landscape is causing species’ ranges to overlap more, and bringing new predators and prey into contact.
• In this system, solutions and conservation interventions are complex, as are people’s opinions about the correct way to manage the area.

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Caracal, meet penguin: How humans pushed unlikely predator and prey together

by Petro Kotzé - Journalist Cape Town, South Africa

Excerpt:

The Urban Caracal Project, a research and education initiative based at the University of Cape Town’s Institute for Wildlife and Communities in Africa, is dedicated to studying Cape Town’s caracal population. It aims to better understand the effects of urbanisation on the city’s wildlife and to discover some of the secrets of how they are able to survive in this challenging landscape.

But surviving in a rapidly expanding city isn’t easy. Indeed, it can be downright dangerous thanks to, among other issues, the increasing presence of environmental pollutants.

As conservation biologists, we are interested in how caracals become exposed to the multitude of pollutants associated with city-living. To do this, we tested the blood of caracals in Cape Town and found worryingly high numbers of different metal pollutants present. Exposure to these metals, including aluminium, arsenic, cadmium, copper, mercury and lead, most likely occurs via the prey species that caracals consume.

This raises important environmental concerns for all the city’s residents – both wildlife and human.

Read the full article at:

Cape Town’s caracals have metal pollutants in their blood – an environmental red flag (theconversation.com)

Gabriella Leighton - Post-Doctoral Fellow, Rhodes University, South Africa
Jacqueline Bishop - Senior Lecturer in Conservation Ecology & Genetics, University of Cape Town, South Africa