page_title: Canada lynx
section_title: Home ranges
hierarchical_section_title: Canada lynx / Ecology and behaviour / Home ranges
caption_attribution_description: Canana lynx (Lynx canadenis) is a medium-sized cat with long legs, large, well-furred paws, long tufts on the ears, and a short, black-tipped tail. The Canada lynx is listed as threatened. Credit: USFWS
context_page_description: The Canada lynx is a medium-sized North American cat that ranges across Alaska, Canada and many of the contiguous United States. It is characterized by its long, dense fur, triangular ears with black tufts at the tips, and broad, snowshoe-like paws. Similar to the bobcat, the hindlimbs are longer than the forelimbs, so that the back slopes downward to the front. The Canada lynx stands 48–56 cm tall at the shoulder and weighs between 5 and 17 kg. The lynx is a good swimmer and an agile climber. The Canada lynx was first described by Robert Kerr in 1792. Three subspecies have been proposed, but their validity is doubted.
  A specialist predator, the Canada lynx depends heavily on snowshoe hares for food. This leads to a prey-predator cycle, as Canada lynxes respond to the cyclic rises and falls in snowshoe hare populations over the years in Alaska and central Canada. When hares are scarce lynxes tend to move to areas with more hares and tend not to produce litters, and as the numbers of the hare increase, so do the populations of the lynx. The Canada lynx hunts mainly around twilight, or at night, when snowshoe hares tend to be active.
context_section_description: Canada lynxes establish home ranges that vary widely in size, depending upon the method of measurement. The two common methods are examining the tracks of the lynx in snow (snow-tracking) and radio telemetry; snow-tracking generally gives smaller sizes for home ranges. Studies based on snow-tracking have estimated home range sizes of 11.1–49.5 km² (4.3–19.1 sq mi), while those based on radio telemetry have given the area between 8 and 783 km² (3.1 and 302.3 sq mi). Like other cats, Canada lynxes scent-mark their ranges by spraying urine and depositing feces on snow or tree stumps and other prominent sites in and around their range.
  Factors such as the availability of prey (primarily snowshoe hare), the density of the lynxes and the topography of the habitat determine the shape and size of the home range. Studies have tried to correlate the abundance of snowshoe hares in an area with the sizes of lynxes' home ranges in that area. A 1985 study showed that the mean size of home ranges trebled—from 13.2 to 39.2 km² (5.1 to 15.1 sq mi)—when the density of hares fell from 14.7 to 1/ha (5.95 to 0.40/acre). However, a few other studies have reported different responses from Canada lynxes at times of prey scarcity; some lynxes do not show any changes in their ranges, while others may resort to hunting in small areas, occupying small home ranges. Canada lynxes generally do not leave their home ranges frequently, though limited prey availability can force them to disperse or expand their ranges.
  Males tend to occupy larger ranges than do females; for instance, data from a 1980 radio telemetric analysis in Minnesota showed that males' home ranges spread over 145–243 km² (56–94 sq mi), while those of females covered 51–122 km² (20–47 sq mi). In a study in the southern Northwest Territories, ranges of individuals of opposite sexes were found to overlap extensively, while the ranges of individuals of the same sex hardly coincided. The study suggested that individuals do not show any significant tendency to avoid or mingle with one another, and thus only passively defend their ranges. Female home ranges contract in size when the females have offspring to take care of and expand to their original size at the time of weaning.
  Canada lynxes at the periphery of a population, given their smaller numbers and susceptibility to separation from the central population by natural barriers (such as rivers), might face more difficulty in breeding with lynxes towards the centre of the population and hence show lower genetic variability. However, Canada lynxes are known to disperse over large distances, often thousands of kilometres, which might increase genetic variability in widely separated populations. They typically move within areas where prey availability and the features of the snow (such as the hardness and the extent to which their paws sink into the snow) are more or less similar; individuals may disperse over smaller areas in areas of soft snow.
caption: Canada lynxes are typically solitary with minimal social bonds.
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