Servical and Caraval
by Michael
The servical and caraval are made up names for made up animals. I know I am being tough but I don’t like it. I don’t like the desire of some private zoo owners to create hybrid animals for their amusement out of an essentially unnatural process that you would never see in the wild. It is a pointless exercise. The only justification is commercial – not a good reason from the cat’s standpoint.
Servical
The servical is a wild cat hybrid. In this instance it is the result of one wild cat species mating with another wild cat species of similar size. You also have wild cat hybrids from domestic/wild cat matings.
The cervical is the offspring of a successful mating between a male serval and a female caracal.
Apparently a servical was born at Los Angeles Zoo when a caracal and serval were put in the same cage together.
You won’t see any pictures of a servical. Or they are few and far between. It is a terrible name as Google thinks you mean cervical (female human anatomy)! The words are pronounced identically.
Caraval
copyright Messybeast.com.
The caravel is the offspring of a successful mating between a female serval and a male caracal.
An alternative name is “cara-serval” (a mouthful of a name). The difference in names and types of cat from essentially the same mating indicates that you get a different cat if the parent is a female serval or a male serval. I’d like to know exactly why.
Caraval is also a poor name as one thinks of “caravelle” meaning a sailing ship but the word is also often used in commerce.
As I said, I don’t like the intentional or inadvertent mating of different species of animal. It smacks of exploitation for the “exotic” animal market. That is a personal viewpoint and I respect the views of others.
Note: use of picture of caravel. I claim fair use as its publication here does not harm but improves the prospects of the website source (link provided) and there are no commercial issues involved in the republication of the image here.
