How to Tell the Difference Between a Bobcat and a Canada Lynx

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Canada Lynx? Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, Canada

Lynx vs Bobcat

(You can jump right to the end to spoil the surprise and see How to Tell the Difference Between a Bobcat and a Lynx)

There it was, a large cat sitting calmly in the middle of the road and staring right at us. It was my first wild cat sighting in North America, and it was a lynx! A Canada Lynx! We couldn’t believe our luck. Visitors had reported seeing lynx in the guest book here at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba, Canada, but I never believed we would actually see one. We watched it for nearly an hour in the setting sun, hunting along the side of the road. I managed to get a few decent photos and video clips and was very proud to report on our American Safari page that we had seen a lynx.

But then I began to wonder. Had I actually seen a lynx? I looked at a range map and realized that the Canadian Lynx (Lynx canadensis) and the Bobcat (Lynx rufus) overlapped in this narrow band near the US/Canada border.

Canada Lynx and Bobcat range map (data source IUCN Redlist)

The two cats are pretty similar in size and appearance. It could easily have been either. That’s when I decided it was time for me to learn…

Hmm. Could it actually have been a bobcat? (Captive bobcat at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum)

Is it a Bobcat or a Lynx?

I started to get a little nervous when I read that Lynx subsist almost entirely on snowshoe hare. Even though we did spot snowshoe hares in the area, the cat we observed was hunting birds! Watch our video to see birds barely escaping from the cat’s first two pounces.

But then I discovered that Canadian Lynx at the southern end of their range tend to have a more varied diet than their farther-north counterparts, which includes birds. Then I noticed how short the cat’s hair was. Most lynx photos show cats with luxuriously long winter coats and huge fluffy cheek tufts. But this was mid summer. So I convinced myself that it was simply wearing its summer coat.

Finally I found the definitive proof: tail color. Lynx have an entirely black tail tip, while the tip of a bobcat’s tail is black on top, and white on the bottom. Whew. So it was official. I had seen a lynx!

Yep! Canada Lynx! Look at that tail: completely black tip.

But wait. What about hybrids. After a little research I soon learned that there have been several documented cases of naturally occurring bobcat/lynx hybrids, showing intermittent features of both species. (source: Natural Resources Research Institute).

So in conclusion: who knows? Based on all the traits I’ve researched I feel pretty certain it’s a lynx. Check out the photos and decide for yourself. What do you think?

To help others in their quest to figure out whether they have seen a bobcat or a lynx, I’ve developed this guide:

How to Tell the Difference Between a Bobcat and a Canadian Lynx

How to identify a Canadian Lynx vs a Bobcat

Illustration of How to tell the difference between a Canada Lynx and a Bobcat

(click on the photo for a larger view)

The above photo compares the wild Canada Lynx that I photographed in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, to a captive Bobcat that I photographed in the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona.

The table below is a list of the differences between a Canada Lynx and a Bobcat based on various physical traits and behaviors.

Trait	Canada Lynx	Bobcat
Ears	longer ear tuft	shorter ear tuft
Tail	shorter	longer
	entirely black tip	black tip, white underneath
	no banding	banding
Color	indistinct spotting, primarily gray	distinct spotting, primarily reddish brown
Legs	longer legs	shorter legs
	back legs visibly longer than front	back legs only slightly longer than front
Feet	bigger paws, padded with fur beneath	smaller paws
	longer back foot	shorter back foot
Size	overall larger	overall smaller
Disposition	generally gentler	generally more aggressive
Diet	primarily snowshoe hares (more varied in southern range)	wider variety of prey items

Whether you’ve seen a lynx or a bobcat, consider yourself a very lucky person. North America’s wild cats are not easy to see!

We’ve received many messages from people telling us they’ve seen a big cat in their yards but didn’t have time to take a photo to identify it. Why not try putting a trail camera in your yard? We have two trail cameras in ours that we leave on day and night. We’ve had plenty of photos of our regular day visitors but also the nocturnal ones, like foxes, coyotes and opossums. We use Bushnell Natureview HD and we even take it on our camping trips. Maybe you’ll get lucky and catch a bobcat or a lynx!