Bobcats have both, but the overall look is a spotted cat. Dark spots and streaks cover a brown, buff, or reddish coat, and true stripes appear in just a few places: bars on the inside of the front legs and black bars on top of the short tail.1Forest Preserve District of Will County. What’s the difference?: Bobcat vs. Canada lynx2San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Library. Bobcat Fact Sheet: Physical Characteristics Spots and stripes are close relatives in cats and grow from the same basic patterning system.
Where the Spots and Stripes Appear on a Bobcat
The background color is yellow, buff, or reddish brown, with black spots or streaks running across the whole coat.3Cosley Zoo. Bobcat The belly is white.4Cosley Zoo. Bobcat Spots tend to stretch into short streaks along the back and flanks, so the same animal can look both spotted and streaky depending on the angle. The white underside is usually hidden when a bobcat stands or walks, so many photos show only the darker, spotted upper body. You may see it when the cat stretches, sits, or rolls, and the belly is often spotted too.
The stripes sit in predictable places. The inside of the front legs has horizontal stripes, and the top of the tail has black bars and ends in a black tip.5San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Library. Bobcat Fact Sheet: Physical Characteristics
The tail is the quickest mark at a glance. It is short and looks cut off, which is where the “bob” in the name comes from. The black marks sit on top of the tip while the underside is white, so as the cat walks away you see a flash of white under a dark top.
The face has clues too. Dark lines often run across the cheeks and forehead, and the cheek fur flares out into ruffs. The backs of the ears are dark with a pale spot.
One bobcat can look quite different from another. Spot size, spot density, and how streaky the flanks look vary a lot between individuals, so a cat that seems too plain or too spotted can still be a bobcat. Judge a sighting by the combination of features (bobbed tail, ear shape, ruffs, spotted coat), since no single marking is guaranteed on every animal.
Every bobcat’s pattern is its own.6Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Identification, abundance, and behavior of North American bobcat (Lynx rufus) along road mitigation structures designed for endangered species in South Texas People can identify individual bobcats from camera photos, and matching them by eye works better than software.7Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Identification, abundance, and behavior of North American bobcat (Lynx rufus) along road mitigation structures designed for endangered species in South Texas If a bobcat visits your yard, photograph the same side of the body each time and compare the spot clusters on the shoulder and thigh. The left and right sides can look different, so match side to side.
Bobcat vs Canada Lynx Coat Pattern
The coats of both cats vary, but bobcats generally carry more markings.8Forest Preserve District of Will County. What’s the difference?: Bobcat vs. Canada lynx Bobcat coats are reddish brown with more distinct spots and streaks.9Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. Canada Lynx and Bobcat Identification Lynx are lighter, a yellowish brown, and only some have faint spots.10Forest Preserve District of Will County. What’s the difference?: Bobcat vs. Canada lynx
Coat pattern alone isn’t a clean test, though. A faintly spotted lynx and a pale, lightly marked bobcat can look similar in a single photo. A gray winter bobcat can look like a lynx, so check the tail tip and the feet rather than the overall color.
Where you are helps. Bobcats range across most of the US, while lynx are limited to far-northern forests and a few mountain areas. In most states, a spotted wild cat is almost certainly a bobcat.
To check a photo, work through these clues in order. Look first at the tail tip: a fully black tip points to a lynx, while a black top with a white underside points to a bobcat. Next look at the ear tufts, which are long on a lynx and short on a bobcat. Then look at the feet, since a lynx’s are oversized and heavily furred, almost like snowshoes. If you have video of the cat walking, check the legs, which look long and lanky on a lynx for its body size.
How Bobcat Markings Differ From a Tabby House Cat
In house cats, at least three genes shape the coat markings.11PubMed Central. Defining and Mapping Mammalian Coat Pattern Genes: Multiple Genomic Regions Implicated in Domestic Cat Stripes and Spots One gene sets the striped or blotched tabby pattern, and other genes can break the stripes up into spots.12PubMed Central. Defining and Mapping Mammalian Coat Pattern Genes: Multiple Genomic Regions Implicated in Domestic Cat Stripes and Spots Stripes and spots are variations on one system, which explains how a bobcat can show both.
In a photo, the tail and sides tell the story. A tabby’s tail is long and carries even rings from base to tip, unlike the short bobcat tail with bars only on top. A tabby’s sides show stripes or swirls that run in clean, continuous lines, whereas a bobcat’s sides carry separate spots and short broken streaks. Some tabbies are spotted, and a spotted tabby can look much like a bobcat in the body markings. In that case the tail and face are the better guides.
Size and proportions often beat pattern. A bobcat is two to three times the size of a house cat, with longer legs and a more muscular build, so scale is the quickest clue if a fence, a bowl, or a doorway is in the frame. On a trail camera with nothing for scale, look at proportions: a bobcat looks leggy and rangy next to a domestic cat.
The head differs as well. A bobcat’s cheek ruffs make the face look broad and wide, while a house cat’s face is narrower and rounder. Bobcat ears are short and tipped with a small tuft at most, and the dark backs with a pale spot are not a tabby feature.
Why a Bobcat’s Coat Changes With Season and Age
Bobcats molt twice a year.13Feline Conservation Foundation. Bobcat Molting happens in spring and fall. The summer coat is more reddish and the winter coat is grayish, with black-tipped long outer hairs.14Feline Conservation Foundation. Bobcat Those black tips give the winter coat a frosted, grizzled look that blurs the edges of the spots. So spots can look sharper in summer and softer in winter, and a winter bobcat can seem grayer and less spotted even though the underlying markings haven’t changed.
During a molt the old coat sheds in patches, so a bobcat can look ragged or uneven for a few weeks. The patchy look can make the spots seem smudged.
That matters for trail cameras. The same cat can look red in July and gray in January, and night infrared images turn coats gray. Compare spot layout rather than color between photos.
Kittens look different again. From birth to 4 weeks, they have woolly fur with faint spots.15Amnesty WildLife Refuge. Bobcat Kitten Guide: Size, Sounds, Look & Care Facts Between 4 and 12 weeks the spots darken and sharpen.16Amnesty WildLife Refuge. Bobcat Kitten Guide: Size, Sounds, Look & Care Facts By 3 to 6 months the coat looks like an adult’s, though the spots stand out more.17Amnesty WildLife Refuge. Bobcat Kitten Guide: Size, Sounds, Look & Care Facts
A young bobcat can be mistaken for a lost house kitten. A kitten left by itself is usually not abandoned, because the mother leaves the young while she hunts. Watch from a distance for several hours before concluding anything, and keep pets and people away so she can return. If the kitten is clearly injured, or the mother hasn’t returned after a long watch, contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator or your state wildlife agency. Handling a wild kitten is risky for you and for the animal, and in many places it is illegal to keep one.
Black Bobcats and Other Rare Colors
An all-black or near-black coat does occur in bobcats.18PubMed Central. Photographic documentation of melanism in bobcats (Lynx rufus) in the Greater Everglades It is rare: in the Florida Everglades only about 2 in 1,000 bobcat sightings were black.19PubMed Central. Photographic documentation of melanism in bobcats (Lynx rufus) in the Greater Everglades Black bobcats keep turning up in New Brunswick, Canada, possibly because of a single gene change.20The Canadian Field-Naturalist. Further occurrences of melanism in a northern, peripheral, population of Bobcat (Lynx rufus)21PubMed Central. Heterozygosity is low where rare color variants in wild carnivores prevail
In practice, a black bobcat has an unusually dark coat, but the spots often remain faintly visible in strong sunlight, much as in black leopards. The tail and ear shape stay bobcat-like, so those features remain reliable. The belly and the underside of the tail may still show some lighter shading.
Most black wild-cat reports turn out to be something else. Black house cats, especially feral or free-roaming ones, account for most and are easy to mistake at night. Infrared trail-camera images flatten color and can make a dark tabby look black, and a cat close to the lens looks much larger than it is. A long tail is a quick sign the animal is not a bobcat. Check for the bobbed tail and ear shape, and look for spots in raking light. Treat a black wild cat sighting as unlikely unless other features are clearly bobcat.
If you think you have photographed a real one, save the original photo or video, note the date and location, and send it to your state wildlife agency.
Why Bobcats Have Spots at All
The black-spotted brown coat blends into rocks, brush, and dense plants.22Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. Bobcat That is where bobcats hunt their main prey, cottontail rabbits.23Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. Bobcat
The spots mimic dappled shadow and break up the round shape of the body so it doesn’t read as one solid animal. Dark spots on a tan coat echo the patches of light and shade under brush and grass, so a still bobcat can sit unseen a few yards away. Rabbits and other small prey rely on spotting movement and outlines, so a coat that hides outlines delays detection until the bobcat is close. The bobcat then closes the final distance in a short rush rather than a long chase.
The disguise isn’t perfect. It works best in brushy or rocky settings, and a bobcat standing on bare snow or a lawn stands out.
To spot one yourself, watch brushy edges at dawn and dusk. Look for an outline or movement rather than the pattern. The white on the tail and the backs of the ears often gives the cat away.