The lynx has black hair tufts and flared facial fur.
The Canadian lynx is a wild cat of the coniferous boreal forests that exist in Canada and the northern states in the United States. The Canadian lynx is a secretive animal rarely glimpsed by people. The cat is a close relative to the more common bobcat that exists throughout the two nations, but differences exist between the two that will allow you to tell one from the other.
Identification
The largest male Canadian lynxes will be about 42 inches long and weigh around 40 lbs., but most are considerably smaller. The lynx has a very short tail, in the range of 2 to 5 inches, and long legs with large feet. The feet have a covering of hair on them during the winter that acts as snowshoes, allowing the cat to make its way through the heavy snows of its habitat. The lynx has distinctive black ear tufts and the fur on its face flares out along the edges. The fur varies in color depending upon the season, from gray to brown to cinnamon.
Lynx vs. Bobcat
Bobcats are slighter smaller than lynxes.
The bobcat is a little smaller than the lynx, with obviously smaller feet that lack the hairs the lynx possess that help them get around in winter. The bobcat's tail has black bars on it and the bobcat's fur has many more spots throughout it than that of the lynx. The lynx often will give way to the bobcat when the two have territories that overlap, as the bobcat is the more aggressive of the two despite being a bit smaller. This hurts the lynx because the two compete for the same kinds of prey in northern regions.
Diet
During the winter months, three-quarters of a lynx diet consist of snowshoe hares, a large member of the hare family that has the ability to traverse the deep snow of the northern forests because of its large feet. The lynx will hunt the hare in summer, but will also eat small rodents such as mice and voles, birds and other animals. The lynx will resort to eating carrion when necessary and will take advantage of any large animals it happens to find dead during the winter, such as moose, caribou and deer.
Effects
The dependence of the Canadian lynx on the snowshoe hare means that when hare populations become low, as they tend to do every 10 years, the lynx population declines. According to the Hinterland Who's Who website, the Hudson By Company of Canada, a fur trading outfit, has records that show a pattern over as long as 200 years of lynx populations having close associations with those of the snowshoe hare. The southern range of the lynx shrank in part because of trappers taking too many lynxes during times of low populations of the cat.
Hunting
The hunting technique of the Canadian lynx involves waiting silently during the evening hours along a snowshoe hair trail. The lynx will spring upon the hare when it passes by and quickly kill it. The "National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mammals" says a lynx, being adept at climbing trees, will sometimes wait in a low branch and spring upon an unsuspecting animal. The cat has retractable claws that it uses to grasp its victim.
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