“…and today we’re talking about a cool Canadian cat. But more on that later.”
As iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another. A friend can show you the way to a better you… but sometimes… so can a rival. The Canadian wilderness is the field for an eternal game of cat and hare… and arms race of snowmanship and speed on unsteady ground. The Lynx and the hare are locked in a chase that has molded both of their bodies into machines built for a frigid Life, Death, and Taxonomy.
Description
- Looks like someone took a house cat, hit “zoom and enhance”, and then upgraded it for the snow level in the DLC
- Thick, plush fur that ranges from silvery gray to frosty brown, with a lighter underbelly
- Massive snowshoe-like paws that look comically oversized—nature’s own winter boots
- Long black ear tufts that stick up like permanent bedhead or tiny goth antennae
- Short, stubby tail with a solid black tip, as if it dipped it in ink
- Long legs, especially in the back, giving it a slightly sloped, ready-to-pounce posture
- Face framed with a shaggy ruff of fur that makes it look mildly offended at all times
Measure Up
Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com.
“It took me 2-3 years — but as of tonight or tomorrow – I’m finally caught up. From the Giant Squid to the Black Rat. You did Golden Eagle (ya’ll did a lot of golden animals). Goldie’s tree cobra. Have fun, you’ve only done one cobra so here’s one in a tree.” -StoneKite
Comic Relief “Bobcat Goldthwait” Stand Up Comedy
Males are typically larger than females.
- Body length: 31–43 inches (80–110 cm)
- Tail length: 4–8 inches (10–20 cm)
- Shoulder height: About 19–22 inches (48–56 cm)
The Bearpaw Formation is a naturally occurring geological formation known for its rich fossil content, including ammonites and marine reptiles, and is located in Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. True or False– a large ammonite fossil in the bearpaw formation is about the same length as the height of a Canadian Lynx.
A large ammonite is 40–60 cm (16–24 inches).
- Weight:
- Females: 11–24 pounds (5–11 kg)
- Males: 18–37 pounds (8–17 kg)
Cast-iron Dutch ovens were used in Canada in the Hudson’s Bay Company era from the 1600s through the 1800s fur trade sites. Today, artifacts can be found around fur trade sites. True or False – a large Cast-iron Dutch oven from the period could be the weight of a male bobcat.
Large historic camp cookware pieces can weigh 30–40 pounds.
Fast Facts
- Range: Found across Canada and into Alaska, dipping into the northern United States in places like Montana, Minnesota, and Maine. If it’s cold and snowy, they’re probably fine with it.
- Habitat: Boreal forests thick with spruce and fir—basically the kind of woods where you expect to lose cell service and possibly your sense of direction.
- Diet: Primarily snowshoe hares. Not casually. Not occasionally. We’re talking ride-or-die levels of culinary commitment.
- Hunting Behavior: Solitary, stealthy stalkers that rely on silence and those mega-paws to glide over snow before delivering a precise pounce.
- Mating: Breeding season hits in late winter. After about 63–70 days, females have litters of 1–4 kittens.
- Lifespan: Around 10–15 years in the wild, longer in captivity.
- Social Behavior: Mostly solitary except during mating season or when moms are raising kittens. Think introvert with seasonal exceptions.
- Sounds: Meows, yowls, growls, and the occasional blood-curdling scream that sounds like your Wi-Fi just died during a playoff game.
- Predators: Wolves, cougars, and humans. Kittens have it even tougher, facing owls and other large predators.
- Fun Oddity: Their oversized paws act like natural snowshoes, giving them a competitive edge over other predators in deep snow. It’s basically cheating, but legally.
Major Fact: Hares Eat Lynx?
Canadian Lynx is considered a specialist predator that depends heavily on one prey animal: the snowshoe hare.
Snowshoe hares make up 60–90% of a Canadian lynx’s diet across most of its range.
Lynx are physically adapted to hunt them: large paws for deep snow, excellent hearing, and stealth movement in dense boreal forest.
hares-eat-lynx (HEL) paradox
The hares-eat-lynx (HEL) paradox refers to an anomalous pattern observed in historical Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade records for snowshoe hares and Canadian lynx pelts.
In classical predator-prey theory (e.g., Lotka-Volterra models), the predator population (lynx) should peak after the prey population (hares), because abundant prey allows predators to thrive and reproduce, leading to a lag where lynx numbers rise following a hare boom and decline after a hare crash.
However, in portions of the pelt data (particularly noted in analyses from the 19th-early 20th century), the peak in lynx pelts often leads the peak in hare pelts—meaning lynx harvests appear to peak before hare harvests. This reversal suggests, absurdly, that hares are somehow “controlling” or “eating” the lynx population (hence the provocative name “hares-eat-lynx”), inverting the expected “lynx-eats-hares” dynamic.
The paradox was highlighted in ecological literature, including a 1973 article by Michael Gilpin titled “Do hares eat lynx?” which popularized the ironic phrasing. It challenged the direct application of simple predator-prey models to the data, as pelt numbers were long assumed to proxy wild population densities.
Later research (e.g., Bo Deng’s 2018 HLCT model) resolved it by showing that human trappers’ selective harvesting behavior—driven by higher value of lynx pelts—distorted the records, creating the apparent reversal while wild populations followed the classical pattern.
Ending
So be a solitary sigma, walk across the snow like a Mirkwood elven princeling, and fluctuate your population numbers based on the availability of your favorite food, like having more kids because there’s more pizza in the world like the canadian lynx here in LDT.