Why do lynx have big feet

Canada lynx look like they have wide faces, thanks to long patches of fur that grow like beards along their cheeks. They are most easily recognized by the black tips of their bobbed short tails and the long tufts on their triangle-shaped ears.

Canada lynx have large, thick-furred paws that act like snowshoes, which help it hunt during winter — but watch out for the claws! Despite its long legs, the Canada lynx cannot run fast. It prefers to lie in wait for prey, then pounce. The Canada lynx closely resembles its southern forest-dwelling relative, the bobcat, but the truth is in the tail.

Lynx tails are completely black-tipped, while bobcat tails have a white ring below the black tip. Snowshoe hares are such an important source of food for Canada lynx that when hare populations fall, so do the number of lynx. The number of lynx also rises when hare populations bounce back.

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Donate and Support Geography in Canada. The Royal Canadian Geographical Society family of sites:. The Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Canadian Geographic Photo Club. Canadian Geographic Education. The Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx has long, thick, light-colored fur that is silky in the winter and shorter, thinner, and darker in the summer.

This is the largest and most numerous of the lynx species, and it is the most widespread, currently found in 46 countries in Europe, northern Asia, and the Middle East! A subspecies of Eurasian lynx, the Siberian lynx, is the largest of all; some males can weigh up to 84 pounds 38 kilograms. Large paws with fur on the soles give Eurasian lynx traction; long legs also help when walking in deep snow. These cats are good swimmers, too, and have been seen crossing rivers.

Their preferred diet is deer and other ungulates. Eurasian lynx living in Russia's Ural Mountains follow the winter migration routes of roe deer, reindeer, and moose. The Spanish or Iberian lynx Lynx pardinus evolved separately from the rest of the Old World lynx populations, isolated from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees Mountains. It is about half the size of the Eurasian lynx and has the most spots on its coat. Its hair is short and coarse for the milder Mediterranean climate. The most rare of the lynx and possibly the rarest of all cats, the Spanish lynx is found in Spain and Portugal only.

It lives in an area where millions of migrating birds gather together each spring and fall; although rabbits are the mainstay of their diet, the cats hunt ducks and other low-flying birds at this time.

The bobcat is known by lots of names: wildcat, bay lynx, and lynx cat. Some people call it the spitfire of the Animal Kingdom, because it seems fearless and won't back down from a fight! Found throughout North America, it is our continent's most common native cat. Bobcats look very similar to Canadian lynx. But bobcats have smaller feet and don't have the furry soles of the other lynx, so they are not as well equipped to live in areas of heavy snow.

Bobcats are able to survive in a variety of habitats, from deserts to swamps to forests, as long as there are places where they can hide. They often live in rocky areas that give them shelter from extreme cold or heat.

Bobcats often compete with coyotes for the same food and shelter. They are good climbers and can escape up a tree, if needed, but they'd rather spend their time on the ground. Bobcats can swim if they have to, but it's not their first choice! Although considered part of the small cat grouping, lynx are much larger than your average housecat, and males are about 25 percent larger than the females.

The four lynx species are physically different from each other and have adapted to their various habitats. Lynx hunt mainly at night, especially in areas near people, and their peak activity periods are at dawn and dusk. Fur provides insulation in-suhl-ay-shun , so it protects them from extreme heat and cold, and. Camouflage cam-oh-flahj helps them sneak up on prey and hide from predators by helping them blend blend in with the rocks, trees, and grasses.

Lynx live in cold, snowy environments. They have long, soft coats to keep them warm. They have extra long hair on their legs and paws to help them move in snow kind of like wearing snowshoes! Their fur is gray to reddish-brown with white-tipped hairs.

They have spots, too, but they are barely visible on their body. It is important to lynx that their prey does not see them. Their fur helps them hide because the color and markings blend in with their surroundings. Lynx look a lot like bobcats, except that they have huge, hairy paws.

They live in coniferous forests, where the snow gets very deep in winter. A coniferous forest has cone-bearing trees, like pines, spruces, firs and larches. Just as snowshoes keep people from sinking in the snow, lynx paws support twice as much weight on snow.

Lynx have big eyes that face forward, as yours do. Lynx are predators. They hunt to survive and need to accurately judge distance of their prey. This is called "binocular vision". Can you guess why? Prey animals, like snowshoe hare or deer, have eyes on the sides of their head.

With eyes on the sides of their heads, they can see in almost any direction. This helps them escape from danger. Cells called "rods" and "cones" make up the part of the eye that captures light. Cones help see color and rods detect light.

A Lynx has much larger feet and longer legs than a Bobcat. Its range extends further north, which means it must be well equipped to deal with snow much of the year. A Lynx has big, furry paws, and when its feet land the toes spread way out.

Much of the time, this food consists of Snowshoe Hares —anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of the diet of Lynx is made up of hares. The soles of Snowshoe Hare feet are also well-furred, particularly in winter, enabling them to run on soft, deep snow without sinking in very far.

Because Snowshoe Hares are extremely fast and agile reaching speeds of 30 mph and jumping 12 feet in a single bound , the feet of any serious predator must also be well adapted to traveling on snow.

The range of the hare is almost coincident with that of the lynx, and their numbers cycle together, a well known ecological phenomenon that, while having an intuitive explanation—when hares fall in number, so do their predators, and when the hares recover so do lynxes—is in fact not fully understood.

The hare range:. Back to those paws. Have they actually shown that lynx can walk and run more effectively on snow than, say, bobcats? Look at the size of those paws!

Like all lynx, it has 28 teeth, with four long canines for puncturing and gripping. The lynx can feel where it is biting the prey with its canines because they are heavily laced with nerves. The lynx also has four carnassials that cut the meat into small pieces. In order for the lynx to use its carnassials, it must chew the meat with its head to its side. There are large spaces between the four canines and the rest of the teeth, and a reduced number of premolars, to ensure that the bite goes as deeply as possible into the prey.

Adaptations that lynx have for manoeuvring through the deep snow are feet with a large gap between the first and second toes and their big toe set at a wide angle which gives them a better vicelike grip on the snow. Well, see for yourself. Note that the hare, not having any cover, tries to escape by both zigzagging and burrowing beneath the snow. Just based on my own walking-through-snow experience, I would guess that even if a bobcat could run as fast as a Lynx through snow over short distances i.