A caracal is an extremely elusive creature – so when there are pictures shared it’s a rare, once-in-a-lifetime, moment captured on camera.
A couple sitting in a car at Cape Point at the weekend were delighted when they watched a caracal stroll around on the rocks nearby scouting out the kelp.
Hilton and Loretta Purvis were visiting Cape Point when they happened across the curious caracal.
“Sitting in the car in the Cape Point Nature Reserve, at the Southwestern most point of the African continent site, a caracal comes noodling past, sniffing around amongst the dry kelp washed up onto the rocks!” they said.
The pictures were shared on Urban Caracal Project’s Facebook page.
“We have found that caracals in the southern part of the Cape Peninsula often use the beach as a ‘highway’ to travel along. For example, if you have a look at our previous post on #TMC24#Protea
you can see her GPS locations as she moves up and down the coastline. These individuals are mainly moving between hunting locations and to patrol their territories,” said the caracal foundation.
Their primary source of food is birds and tend to like Cape cormorants, kelp gulls and terns. According to Urban Caracal Project, these tuff-haired cats have ‘amazingly flexible diets’ that incorporate many different species, but they tend to focus on the prey that is most abundant and available – at Cape Point, this is definitely seabirds.
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