The black serval (Leptailurus serval) is an unusual, melanistic version of the African serval, a medium-sized wild cat that's native to Africa.
Regular servals are stunning; leggy like a supermodel, spotted like a cheetah, with a long neck and oversized ears.
Black servals take this elegance to new heights. They owe their unique colouration to an as-yet-unidentified blip in their genetic code, which affects their pigment-producing cells. Black servals have jet black coats, sometimes with faint ‘ghost’ spots.
They cut a striking silhouette. Servals have the longest legs relative to the body size of any cat. Standing at around half a metre tall (1.6ft), they can run at speeds of 40 miles per hour (64km/h) and leap up to 3m (9.8ft) high.
This comes in handy when chasing down the small mammals, reptiles and amphibians that they eat, and potentially lifesaving when it helps them to evade predators, such as leopards, hyenas and African wild dogs.
Servals also have the largest ears relative to head size of any cat.
If human ears were adjusted to match relative serval proportions, they would be the size of dinner plates – but not as effective.
Serval ears contain 22 muscles, enabling the cat to independently rotate each ear through 180 degrees. Servals hunt in tall grass where their small prey is practically invisible, so their radar-like ears help them to triangulate the location of their prey, even if it’s underground.
Combined with their long, powerful legs, these adaptations make servals one of the most successful hunters in the wild cat kingdom. Where lions and leopards hit the jackpot roughly a third of the time, servals manage a success rate of more than 50 per cent.
Traditionally, black servals were found in densely forested areas above 2,000m (approx. 6,600ft), such as the Aberdare Mountains in Kenya or the Ethiopian Highlands. Here, their coats were thought to provide extra camouflage, helping the cats blend into the shadows.
Then black servals were spotted in the grasslands of the Tsavo Ecosystem, Kenya’s largest protected wilderness.
A survey conducted by the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and Wildlife Works between 2011 and 2016 found that 47 per cent of serval sightings in Tsavo involved melanistic individuals.
This is a much greater proportion than had been seen in the higher, forested areas, and it begged a question: Why are there so many black servals in this bright, arid environment?
No one knows for sure.
One theory is that their colouration makes melanistic servals more likely to be noticed and recorded here – so, a sampling error.
Another is that the numbers reflect a random fluctuation in gene frequencies – so, genetic chance.
And a third hypothesis suggests that the cats’ genetics endow them with features, such as better thermoregulation or enhanced disease resistance, that can’t be seen but that make these animals more likely to survive and pass their melanistic genes on to the next generation.
Whatever the reason, these cats remain a source of fascination and a sight to behold.
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