Wildlife Photography: The Sacred Cat
I have a distinct memory of fourth grade summer camp in Ohio, when some counselors told us that Mountain Lions used to roam in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio - and that local rumors even talked of some lions still around.
This was all I needed to be utterly captivated by the notion of sharing the woods with a wild lion, and even more so the rare chance of seeing one. The image remains in my mind of hanging behind the main group on a hike with one of the counselors, to walk quietly and look for a lion.
Something about rarity got me. Since that moment (and possibly before), learning about, looking for, and possibly seeing or photographing rare wildlife has deeply interested me. Throughout my adolescence this meant an undying search for snakes under rocks, reading and following signs about the native animals of any given natural park or hiking trail we found as a family, and always seeking out a chance for wildlife on vacation.
Surely this strange niche passion led to my undergraduate studies in Wildlife Biology, and more specifically to academic trips I took to the Peruvian Amazon, and the East African Savannah. In parallel, I was exposed to birding around this time. From here I was hooked, and all of my time and focus went to birding and wildlife photography; chasing, seeing, and documenting as many species as possible…and the more rare the better, of course.
Birding is naturally the best outlet for pursuing rare wildlife. Birds are generally the most conspicuous class of animals when traveling, or even out and about locally. Birds also typically offer more diverse speciation in any given locale, region, and time spent observing, especially for the naturalist or photographer (as opposed to a diligent scientific collector surveying invertebrates, for example). With just over 10,000 global species of birds, they also provide a great reason for intentional nature-based travel, no matter how serious of a birder you are.
So, I kept birding, and still do, but the charismatic megafauna and allure of hard-to-find non-birds stuck with me. This is true for herps, such as the Emerald Tree Boa and Eyelash Vipers I still desperately want to photography, but mostly for mammals. Wild mammals are (again - generally) harder to find and photograph.
Sub-Saharan Africa is really THE spot for wild mammal photography. North America has some competitors such as Yellowstone and the Alaskan coast, but Africa wears the championship belt.
I have photographic goals for the whole world, many in Africa: photographing the Caracal, the Serval, the African Wild Cat, the African Wild Dog, and any venomous snakes I could find. While in Kenya and Tanzania in college, I struck out on all of these goals (except for one dead Black Mamba). Rare wildlife is hard to find!
Why the Caracal? Something about the way it looked. The fact that everyone sees the Lions, the Leopards, and the Cheetahs. Something about this mysterious cat and it’s Ancient Egyptian face and elegant black ear tufts. The name "Caracal" comes from the Turkish word “karakulak", meaning "black ear”. The Egyptians not only depicted these cats in their art but also mummified them, suggesting a sacred status. They appear in tomb paintings and were sometimes shown pulling the chariots of gods, indicating divine power. The Caracal's ability to leap and catch birds in mid-flight particularly impressed the Egyptians, who sometimes trained them for hunting - a practice that spread to India and Persia. In Persian and Indian culture, the Caracal was known as the "siyah-gush" (also black-eared), and rulers kept them as hunting companions, using them much like Europeans used peregrine falcons.
Anyways, we did not see a Caracal, and the more I learned, I realized this would be a pipe dream.
Fast forward to Jenna and I’s honeymoon in 2024, back to East Africa for me for the first time in 14 years!
I had my goals again, the Caracal and the Serval being top of the list, with of course some standard stuff and a lot of birds. We even worked with our tour company well ahead of time to arrange a drive who really knew his birds and wildlife (shoutout Enoch!). When I told him I wanted to see the Caracal, he just laughed and said ‘oh my gosh, ay yi yi’. In 15 years as a professional wildlife guide in northern Tanzania, he had only seen one, once. He even remarked of a group of photographers who came just to see and photograph the Caracal, and they did not see one, despite scouring their little-known habitat in the Serengeti for days.
Enoch knew of a certain part of the park where they were (rarely) seen more than others, and so we would cruise this area occasionally while on game drive. It was recently burnt, and had some good birds around, usually a lot of Baboons, and was otherwise dominated by herds of Thompson’s Gazelles. The only predators around were Cheetah, since the only prey were the tommies, and the burn left the country devoid of tall grass and brush, making it impossible for Lions and Leopards to hunt there.
Side note - it was also full of the dreaded Tsetse Flies. Shoot these terrible things to the moon.
So there we were driving the burn, and we both spot what looks to be a carcass just off the road. Sure enough it was a Thompson’s Gazelle, recently killed. Right as we pull up to the carcass there is a flurry, and Enoch yells ‘ALEX ALEX TAKE A PHOTO TAKE A PHOTO’.
…IT IS THE CARACAL!
What a dream, what a moment, what an unbelievable dose of miraculous good fortune. The cat - much unlike the big cats of the Serengeti - was skittish and skeptical, and only gave me a brief second for photos before it bolted out of sight.
We continued to look, and came back the next day, but it was gone.
My heart just started racing again as I typed this. This one will stay with me forever, and these photos are going on my wall!
