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Carries – carries not? Lynx tracks

 

 

Last week several reports arrived about seeing lynx tracks, and moreover from places where they usually haven’t been encountered.

 

The night-time cold has preserved a strong snow crust that easily carries the cats weighing some twenty kilos; large males can weigh ten kilos more. The heat period of the females started towards the end of February and lasts throughout March; they seldom leave their own territory. A number of adult males take an interest in the rutting female; their moving territory is large – a thousand hectares. It is necessary for reproduction, the female is ready to mate only for three days and is in a rut for more than a year because it cares for the young nearly two years.  We will see in May how a lynx family develops in the female’s care; pregnancy lasts 63 to 75 days.

 

Let us look at the feeding habits of the cats.  A lynx catches its prey on the ground by still hunting; if the lightning quick attack is fruitless it doesn’t pursue the prey further. An adult animal’s daily food demand is up to a kilo and a half of meat and it doesn’t return to the carelessly hidden prey more than a couple of times. The teeth and jaw-bones of lynxes are too weak for eating frozen meat and so they have to go hunting again. Smelly meat and carcasses are not touched by lynxes. Which are their prey animals? In forests mountain hares and large Galliformes birds. In cultural landscapes roe deer, but very few are left of those. Rodents, on coming across them. In addition foxes and raccoon dogs that have multiplied far too much in our forests. There is of course a serious risk to catch scabies and it is confirmed by diseased animals caught by hunters.

 

The number of lynxes is estimated at around 750 individuals. Supposing that one third is juveniles and one third females that rut for more than a year, this spring a little more than a hundred lynx mothers may be carrying offspring. This very hypothetical calculation is brought up just to give an idea of the order of magnitude.