Flora and fauna in Slovakia – the Eurasian lynx

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‘The tiger of our forests’, ‘the phantom’: these are names that have been given to Slovakia’s largest wild cat, the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx). As an adult, the male weighs 24 kg on average and the female around 4 kg less. In the wild, the lynx can live for up to 17 years. The lynx’s particularly typical and unmistakeable features include tufts of hair on its ears, a black-spotted coat, and bobbed tail. It has excellent eyesight (as referenced in the second part of its Slovak name ‘rys ostrovid’) and superb hearing, but a less developed sense of smell. Generally living and hunting individually, the lynx is agile and can jump well and far. The lynx is in fact a very shy animal that never attacks humans. In the past, the lynx was hunted by the nobility for its valuable pelt and its claws were used in folk medicine. It used to be severely persecuted and was almost hunted out of the territory of what is now Slovakia, surviving until today only in small numbers in the central northern part and in the Eastern Carpathians. Since 1999 the lynx has had year-round protected status in Slovakia. As well as being a treasure of the country’s natural heritage, lynxes in Slovakia are also a source population for efforts to strengthen the species’ presence in other European countries.