Treasures from Our West: Bobcat

Originally featured in Points West magazine in Fall 2011

The secretive bobcat (Lynx rufus) is a common, widespread, but seldom-seen resident of the Greater Yellowstone region. It ranges across North America from southern Canada to northern Mexico, including most of the continental United States. The species is highly adaptable, inhabiting wooded areas, wet meadows, and semi-desert, urban edges.

Their preferred diet includes rabbits and hares, but they will hunt anything from insects, small birds, chipmunks, and other small rodents to deer. The bobcat is smaller than the Canada lynx, with proportionately shorter legs and feet. Although the lynx ranges farther north and generally higher in elevation in mountainous terrain, the range of the lynx and bobcat overlap in some areas, including the Greater Yellowstone region. This bobcat, purchased from a licensed trapper in Park County, Wyoming, occupies the middle-aged section of the Forest Succession exhibit in the Draper Natural History Museum.

Bobcat specimen. DRA.305.137

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