AMAZING
ANIMALS
Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
A pair of tiny black ears peeked through the tall
savanna grass. Suddenly the kitten—an unusual
all-black serval—leaped onto a boulder before
rolling off to play with its spotted sibling.
The dark, solid color surprised photographer Will
Burrard-Lucas, who’d come to this spot to snap pics
of lions. “You have to be pretty lucky to see any
servals in the wild, much less a black one,” he says.
Servals are wild cats with big ears, long legs, and
spotted fur—usually. But this kitten has a rare
10 NAT GEO KIDS^ • MAY 2022
quality called melanism (pronounced MEL-uh-nih-
zum), in which the animal’s body makes only black
fur pigment.
“Servals hunt rodents at night, so the black fur
might make it a better hunter,” says Leslie A. Lyons,
an expert who studies feline coat color. “But it
might also make it harder for the cat to stay cool
on the savanna.”
For the photographer, however, spotting this
black cat was super lucky. —Neil C. Cavanaugh
THE MAMA
SERVAL
WATCHES HER
ALL-BLACK
KITTEN PLAY.Black
Serva
lSp
ot
te
d
COME HOME
BEFORE IT
GETS TOO
DARK!
BUT
NIGHTTIME
IS MY
FAVORITE!