The Canada Lynx (Lynx canadensis) is a member of the family Felidae. It is also called Loup Cervier, or Canadian Lynx. Its length is about 40 inches.
Description: Feet are much larger than in a wild cat, tails are shorter, fur is much longer, and it is looser. The color is light gray mottled with brownish, caused partly by the dark bases of the hairs. The tips of ears with tufts of long, black hairs. Underparts are white, tail is tipped with black, face-ruff long, along white bordered with black.
Range. Boreal North America, formerly to the mountains of Pennsylvania. Replaced in Newfoundland by the allied Newfoundland Lynx, L. subsolanus Bangs, darker and more richly colored; and in Alaska by a paler form, L. canadensis mollipilosus Stone.
The Canada lynx is the real lynx of all the north, that mysterious creature that the ancients believed possessed the power of seeing through all substances, whether opaque or not to other eyes. The distinction between this species and the lynx of Northern Asia and Europe appears to be no more than a safety concern ascribed to the local environment. Those branches of the family that have strayed southward into the forests of a more temperate climate have invariably decreased in size, showing that the true home of their race is in the north.
The Canada lynx is a savage, flat-faced beast, with enormous muscular legs and paws out of proportion to the size of its lean body and absurd retroussé tail. Its soft fur of clouded gray is so blended with various shades of pale buff and tawny as to be extremely difficult to distinguish in any light or against almost any background; even in the cruel publicity of a barred cage, it is still indistinct, and one might well fancy the cage empty at a little distance. The lynx makes noiseless leaps across the northern woods, his large paws helping him on the snow or landing soundlessly among the dry summer leaves or brittle twigs, ready to pounce on hares or grouses before they can react.
Canadian Lynx can also climb trees with ease, rob the nests of birds and squirrels, or stretch themselves along a lower branch from which he can launch himself on whatever may pass beneath. Yet since every creature that he hunts is equally well fitted for the contest and even more earnest and watchful in its endeavors to avoid him and so enjoy its wildlife in the woods a little longer, the lynx must necessarily go without food often for days together in the winter, glad enough perhaps to pull some frozen scrap of flesh or skin out of the snow, dropped there by more fortunate hunters’ weeks before.
The lack of insect scavengers is not felt in the woods in winter. Thus, every scrap of flesh that is scattered is wanted by one warm-blooded creature or another before the warm weather comes again. The lynx appears to have its summer home in tangled thickets and snarls of young growth, where the interlocking branches of fallen trees afford protection. Here the ill-natured kittens are raised and taught to hunt, so that when the bitter struggle of winter is forced upon them, they may, if possible, hold their own and prolong their lives at the expense of others, so that their race may live.
They hold on to life grimly through long, cold nights in the dark Northern forests, believing somehow that at last spring will be in the woods again, bringing flight birds from the South, and awakening the small creatures that sleep all winter down deep in the frozen earth where the most desperate lynx can never reach them. Until then, the lynxes must hunt as best they can, tireless and in splendid health, and quite unconscious of the cold, but oh, so hungry!
One of the most amazing facts in nature is the length of time that most flesh-eating animals can go without food for extended hunting expeditions through deep snow, night after night, breathing frozen air that drives a man hungry. Soon after the heartiest meal, they keep up their vigor, prepared for a last-ditch battle when the protracted chase finally comes to an end.
Read More: The Northern River Otter (Lutra canadensis)
