THE SMALLER AFRICAN CATS 
I N addition to such large and formidable representatives of the cat 
tribe as the lion and the leopard, there exist in various portions of the 
great continent of Africa many comparatively small species of the 
same genus. These smaller cats are, however, seldom encountered by 
sportsmen, as they are very nocturnal in their habits. Perhaps the 
commonest, as it is certainly the handsomest, of the lesser African 
wild cats is the serval ( Felis serval ), which is found in all localities suitable 
to its habits from the Cape to Algeria, and from Somaliland to Senegambia. 
Considerable variation is met with in the markings of servals even from 
the same district, and the ground colour, which is always handsomely 
spotted and streaked with black, may vary from pale yellow to a 
distinctly reddish shade. The serval is rather a long-legged animal, 
standing about eighteen inches at the shoulder. Black servals are 
sometimes met with. In South Africa, however, such animals are 
excessively rare, as in all my experience I only met with one example of 
the kind, which was killed by one of Lewanika’s hunters in the valley of 
the Upper Zambesi in 1888. I managed to obtain the skin of this black 
serval from Lewanika with enormous difficulty, as he thought that it 
belonged to a previously unknown animal, and was therefore of almost 
priceless value. I subsequently presented this skin to the Natural History 
Museum at South Kensington. 
The serval preys upon small rodents, and possibly the young of the 
smaller antelopes, as well as upon birds from the size of a guinea-fowl 
downwards. I have seen a full-grown serval, which had been caught as a 
kitten, as tame as any domestic cat, and that remembrance has given me 
the idea that the serval is less fierce and intractable by nature than most 
if not all other species of wild cats. When pursued by dogs, servals often 
take refuge in trees. 
Very nearly allied to the serval is the servaline or small spotted serval 
(Felis servalina) of Uganda. The only difference between the two species 
is that in the servaline the conspicuous black stripes always present on 
the neck and shoulders of the typical serval are broken up into spots, 
whilst the spots all over the body of the servaline are smaller than in the 
serval. Otherwise there is no difference between the two animals. 
Other species of small African cats are the tiger-cat (Felis celidogaster ), 
which is an inhabitant of the equatorial forest zone; the common African 
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