Rare black servals caught on camera!



Whilst melanism in cats is common, black servals are extremely rare

Not one but TWO black servals have been photographed ten days apart!

Photographer captures a black serval in Kenya on a photography tour days after a camp manager captured a different one in Tanzania.

A wildlife photographer has proved black cats really are lucky for some after photographing an extremely rare black serval close to Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park.

In February of this year, Sergio Pitamitz was leading a photography tour in the privately owned Lualenyi Camp when a dark spot in the grass stopped the group in their tracks. After waiting a few moments, the group were treated to the sight of the black serval before it slunk off into the bush.

The serval, also known as the tierboskat, is a medium-sized cat, usually buff to golden-yellow in colour with unusual dark spots that become longitudinal stripes about the neck. Its black ear tufts lend it an endearing look, adding to its unusual feline features.

The serval is normally buff coloured with dark spots and
 neck stripes

For Pitamitz, it was a defining moment – one that photographers long for on any trip: capturing something rare and beautiful. The serval is not yet an endangered cat but its elusive habits and nocturnal hunting mean it is seldom seen by safari groups.

Black cats lucky for some

This is great news in terms of conservation and comes at a time when some wild cats in Africa are in a serious decline. Thankfully, servals are currently listed as ‘least concern’ and thrive in southern Africa especially.

However, several of the big cat species – lions, cheetahs, leopards – are now endangered with numbers diminishing rapidly and fears for their continual survival are growing.

Research the commonality of a black serval online and it won’t deliver much to you apart from a smattering of photos. However, with a little persistent digging, something even more extraordinary came to light.

Ten days before Pitamitz snapped his serval near Tsavo, another black serval was spotted in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park by Alison Mees who manages a camp there. The odds for something like this happening ten days apart must be smaller than my chance of winning the lottery twice in the same time frame. That only partially puts into perspective just how phenomenal this really is.

The owl and the pussycat

Servals are known as the owls of the cat family for their nocturnal activities and their hunting techniques. Owls hunt almost silently and with a precision that would be envied by most carnivores if only they had evolved to feel deep emotions.

The serval, therefore, has a hunting prowess requiring no additional support from camouflaged black fur. Their large ears enable them to also pinpoint the location of rodents with precision. They are capable of high leaps of up to 2 metres due to their long legs and land to secure their prey before it even has a chance to react. With one bite to the neck or head, they are then able to kill their prey.

The serval can leap up to 2 metres in the air to catch its prey

Back to black

Black cats – known as melanistic cats – are so coloured due to a gene mutation that creates more dark pigment than light. Though it is common throughout 13 of the 38 cat species, the trait is rare in servals, and only a handful of records exist of black servals throughout Kenya and neighbouring Tanzania. There are also recent reports across a few other sub-Saharan countries close to Kenya.

It is not clear why menlanism evolves in cats but for nocturnal hunters, camouflage may be the answer. In dimly lit habitats, being melanistic certainly has its advantages, too.

However, for the serval, living in equatorial temperatures could overheat them but as nocturnal hunters in colder temperatures, they do fine without their camouflage so there is no obvious reason for why melanism would occur.

With two cases now reported less than two weeks apart, could a melanistic gene explosion be on the horizon in East Africa?