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Sunday, January 11, 2009

Serval Cats

Water colour painting

The Serval cat, an animal about twice the size of a large domestic cat is distributed widely throughout Africa. They have unusually long legs, small heads, very large ears and short tails. Their coats are a yellowish sandy coulor with buff to off white underparts.

They have black spots on their bodies that in certain parts merge into stripes. Adult Serval cats can weigh between 8 and 20 kg's and grow to 3 feet long and stand 24 inches at the shoulder with the female slightly smaller than the male.

Wild Servals are more common on the open savannas in tall grass near wetlands or rivers. Their large ears can apparently hear the slight motion of a rodent up to 20 feet away. Their characteristic pouncing in the long grass allows them to also target birds in flight and have been recorded leaping 10 to 15 feet straight up and pluck a bird in flight out of the air.

These mainly nocturnal, terrestrial cats are also good climbers and are equally comfortable in water fishing for a meal. Their amazing adaptability has aided the survival of an animal that was once hunted for it beautiful coat.

Serval cats have long been held in captivity as domestic cats dating back thousands of years to the ancient Egyptians. More recently they have been bred in Europe and the USA.

So for all you cat lovers looking for the ultimate exotic cat, Servals although still a wild cat can
make a good human companion.

11 comments:

Sharkbytes (TM) said...

Beautiful stuff. I like your style.

jayiel said...

cute cats and very informative...
excellent!

Sher said...

This is my first visit to your blog--I love your artwork!

Have a great day,
Sher

Anonymous said...

I love these cats. I don't know if I'd ever have enough land to let one run around. I think we're too stacked and packed in the city for such a cat.

Milkberry said...

oh the painting is awesome!

Up Close said...

oh my... the look like tigers.lol!
ohhh I plenty of cats before... just can't adopt one now.

Anonymous said...

There's been a bit of debate here in Australia about allowing these cats to be imported and bred here. Native animals have a bad time already with feral cats, and the argument is that if any of these went wild the native animals would be slaughtered.

Census said...

I have something for you on my blog

http://censloft.blogspot.com/2009/01/award-and-part-5-colour-basics.html

If you don't wnat to pass it on, I understand but I just had to pass it too you as I enjoy your work so much!!

Jackie said...

Beautiful cats. In some ways they remind me of the bobcats that we deal with here in Oklahoma where I live.

Of course the coloring is different, but the characteristics sound very familiar.

Lovely work!:-)

Anonymous said...

Great picture, nice article and a very nice blog too.

Anonymous said...

*WoooW*
Love this painting.Nice one.