A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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caracal
The caracal is a medium-sized wild cat of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. It is plain tawny and long-legged, with black tufts of hair standing a couple of inches off the tips of the ears. It hunts mostly at night. It is the great leaper among cats and can take a bird out of the air ten feet up, straight off the ground, twisting to swat it down.
Etymology
English took the word through French from Turkish karakulak, which means black ear. The whole animal is named for the tufts. It entered European languages in the eighteenth century. In much of southern Africa, the animal is not a caracal at all but a rooikat, Afrikaans for red cat.
Notes
Caracals were tamed and used for bird hunting in Iran and India, where a standing wager involved turning one loose on a flock of pigeons and betting on how many it would bring down in a single rush. What the ear tufts are for is unresolved. The proposals include signaling, hearing, and breaking up the outline of the head in grass.