The Serval (officially described in 1776) is a medium-sized, long-limbed African wild cat with large, upright ears and a tawny-yellow coat marked with large black blotches and spots. Servals are usually golden with black spots. The serval has three color morphs: melanistic, brown (usual) and white and two patterns: spotted and freckled. There are also reports of servals with abnormally dark brown base colours.

In Harmsworth Natural History (1910, chief contributors R Lydekker, Sir H Johnston & Prof JR Ainsworth-Davis) p399: In East Africa the serval inhabits the grassy plains at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, where it is not uncommon; and it also ranges to an elevation of five thousand feet or more on the flanks of that mountain. At that elevation a black specimen has been obtained; and since the natives have a separate name for this black phase, it must be comparatively common. In a black skin from South Africa in the British Museum the spots are distinctly visible when the skin is viewed in certain lights, as, indeed, is corroborated by the fact that a number of such skins have been secured. The smaller spotted serval (F servalina) seems to be a distinct species.

In the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1914, Notes on a Collection of East African Mammals presented to the British Museum by Mr. G. P. Cosens. By Guy Dollman. [Received February 12, 1911: Read April 7, 1914.]:-

[. . .] 14. Felis capensis hindei Wrought. Male, Amala River. A fine example of the melanistic phase so frequently met with in these Serval Cats.

Melanistic (black) servals are relatively common in the Aberdare mountains of Kenya. Most Aberdare servals are black and this may be an adaptation to help retain body heat in a cold mountainous area. Melanism is also associated with isolation and inbreeding. The base color of the pelt is darkened to a grey-brown so deep that the black spots are barely visble. As with other melanistic big cats, the larger blotches may be visible at some angles of light. The white flashes on the back of the ears are dulled to yellowish-brown (if present). In the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, May 23, 1911: The Secretary read the following report on the additions made to the Society's Menagerie during the month of April, 1911 [. . .] Amongst the additions special attention may be directed to 1 Black Serval (Felis serval), from Nairobi, presented by the Marchioness of Donegal to H.M. The King's African Collection, on April 25th. Guggisberg reported black servals on the moorlands of the Aberdare Mountains at 9800 ft (3000 metres) and they have also been reported from Mount Kenya, the Mau Forest, the Cheringani Hills and Kilimanjaro. Melanistic servals are also reported from the Usambara Mountains in Tanzania and in hilly country near Nuu, Ukamba.

White servals are white or nearly white, sometimes with golden patches and have pale beige or silvery grey spots. The eyes are pale blue or green. They grow up to 20% larger than normally coloured servals but are said to have delicate health and probably short lifespans. This is similar to white Bengal tigers which grow bigger than normal coloured Bengal tigers but are less healthy due to inbreeding. It is also reported that female white servals die as kittens and have never survived beyond 2 weeks old (possibly the mutation is on the X chromosome and is lethal if 2 copies are inherited). The colour mutation is claimed to be not albinism though there are different forms of albinism (for example, the Siamese cat is due to a form of albinism), some of which are due to inability to make certain enzymes. Since these enzymes have other uses in the body apart from pigment, this could account for the health problems and the early mortality of females with the mutation.

White servals have never been documented in the wild. In captivity, there have been 4 male white servals and one male white-footed serval; there may be others living as pets. The facility holding most of these white servals had no plans to breed any more. Frosty, described as a "white-footed serval" was born in January 1995 into the pet trade. Kongo and Tonga were born in May 1997 to a pet serval and developed silvery grey spots as he matured. Kongo died in 2004 following a severe reaction to hay bedding. Pharoah was born to a pet serval in April 1999 and has some dark yellow and black markings. A white serval was born and died at the age of two weeks in Canada in the early 1990s while yet another is owned by a family living in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The mutation possibly still exists in pet servals and might appear again. The colour could be perpetuated (e.g. in zoos) by breeding the white males to normal (tawny) females. Assuming that the mutation is recessive, the offspring would be tawny coloured carriers of the white mutation. Breeding two carriers together would result in some white offspring. Unfortunately this would also result in potentially unwanted tawny servals, of whom only two thirds would carry the mutation. White servals have not been reported in the wild. True (pink-eyed) albinos have not been recorded.

In addition to albino and spotted "white" servals, piebald servals have been observed. These had a similar pattern of markings to a tuxedo cat: belly, lower legs, tail-tip, chest and chin.

The servaline, known to western naturalists since the 1770s, was once considered to be a separate species to the serval. In 1839, W. Ogilby documented a small-spotted Serval native to moist savannah zone in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and other parts of western Africa. He referred to it as the Servaline. Although it resembled the Serval, instead of having large spots the Servaline was speckled with tiny dots and from a distance it appeared to be unpatterned and uniform in colour. In the days when naturalists were so keen to name species that any minor variation in colour or pattern was described as aa "newly discovered species," the speckled form of Serval was regarded as a separate species (F. servalina). This was supported by claims that Servalines were smaller than spotted Servals and that there were no intermediate types of spotting - only large spots or freckles. Even after tribesmen supplied kittens of both types from the same litter, western naturalists refused to believe that they were the same species until a game warden named Colonel Pitman studied a number of serval/servaline pelts.

The Servaline cat (Felis servalina), is another beautifully marked African species, considerably less than the caracal, for it rarely measures nines than 16 or 17 inches in length, exclusive of the tail, which is about 10 inches more, and its height at the shoulders varies from 11 to 12 inches. The general colour of the fur is a pale tawny, darker on the middle of the back, and shading to pale fulvous on the sides and inside of the legs. The lips, chin, throat, and breast, are white. Four indistinct reddish lines commence above the eyes and are continued over the forehead and along the neck to the shoulders, while other two similar bands, starting from the corners of the eyes, and proceeding along the face, disappear on the sides of the neck; on the cheeks are several irregular spots and streaks. Along the back are several small, solid, reddish-brown spots, which become larger as they approach the sides, haunches, and abdomen, whilst spots on the shoulders take the form of bands running towards the breast. On the inside of the legs are two reddish coloured bands, and the tail is fulvous with five or six imperfect reddish-brown rings, and a pale tip. The Servaline cat has seldom been brought to this country, and little is known of its life history, except that its habits are carnivorous, as with other members of the genus. It is a native of West Africa, specimens having been brought to England from Sierra Leone and Kinsembo, near Ambriz, on the Congo. Another closely allied species from West Africa has been named, by the late Mr. Gray, Felis neglacta. The animal, which was brought from the Gambia, has the ground colour of its fur grey, and the head and body are marked with numerous small dark spots, those on the lower part of the side being rather larger than the others. The abdomen is white, with large blackish spots, the tail is half the length of the body, with a dark line along the upper surface, and the sides paler, with obscure indications of dark bands. This typical skin is in the British Museum. - Zoological Notes. XXIV.- African and Asiatic Tiger Cats. Wm. Yellowly, South Shields, Newcastle Chronicle, 22nd May 1886

A SERVALINE CAT AT THE ZOO. An interesting addition has recently been made to the Small Cats House at the Zoological Gardens, in the form of a Servaline cat (Felis servalina), the first that has been acquired by the society for more than ten years. This species which comes from West Africa, obtains its name from its resemblance to the larger and better known Serval (Felis serval), which appears, however, to have a rather wider geographical range, examples having been received from South Africa. - Pall Mall Gazette, Thursday 1st July 1897

Mr R. I. Pocock presented an interesting paper on the subject at the last meeting of the Zoological Society for this session on Tuesday evening. [. . .] With regard to the serval (F. serval) and servaline cat (F. servalina) he believes that these should be regarded as a distinct species, though Elliot regarded them as varieties. - Notes on Some African Wildcats. The Field, Saturday 22nd June 1907. Vol 109, p. 1062

According to the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Feb, 1914: Mr. Guy Aylmer, F.Z.S., exhibited some skins of mammals from Sierra Leone, including those of a Serval (Felis capensis) and of a Servaline Cat (P. servalina), and stated that a native had brought him two kittens, almost certainly from the same litter, one being spotted like the Serval and the other obscurely speckled like the Servaline Cat. This he regarded as proof that the differences between the Servals and Servaline Cats are of no systematic importance. However, the tribesman's claim was dismissed by western experts since he had no independent testimony. Some years later, Colonel CRS Pitman, a Ugandan game warden, examined a collection of serval and servaline pelts in Northern Rhodesia (modern day Zambia). Pitman found that they formed a continuous sequence ranging from large spotted through intermediate forms to speckled. This proved that the Serval and Servaline were two extremes of a whole range of coat patterns. A selection of skins were sent to the Natural History Museum in London and the Servaline was reclassified as a colour form of Serval.

The identification of the servaline as a pattern variation of the serval was documented by Maurice Burton in SERVAL AND SERVALINE.The Illustrated London News, Saturday 23rd October 1954, pg 708
It may still be true that the leopard cannot change its spots, but this is not so for several of its relatives. The serval, in particular, has appeared under many names and several guises; and although a widespread and apparently a common animal in Africa, south of the Sahara, we are not only none too sure of its exact identity but it has kept the secrets of its habits fairly close. We first meet it in the scientific literature in 1733. It had, however, been already mentioned by Kolbe in 1719, in his "Present State of the Cape of Good Hope." In this he speaks of a Tyger Bushcat the "largest of all the wild cats of the Cape countries . . . spotted something like a Tyger. " Nine years later, Labat, in his "Relation Historique de Ethiopia occidentale," mentions the Nsussi, a kind of wild cat the size of a dog [. . .] Perrault, writing in 1758, was more concerned with how this loup-cerval or chat-pard had come into being. He concluded that it was a hybrid of a cat and leopard cross. [. . .] The serval, as shown in Buffon’s picture it, is a typical cat, except for its unusually long legs, short tail and large ears. The pelage, tawny except on the underparts, which are white, is marked with large, circular black spots. These are widely separated, but tend to run together in streaks in the middle line of the back. The cheeks and forehead lack the dark stripes found in many smaller spotted cats. Another distinctive feature is that the upper part of the inner surface of each foreleg is marked with two black horizontal bands. Cuvier’s specimen was, however, like the one described by the German, Shreber, in 1771, and the one figured by Dr. John Forster in 1781. These were separated in 1820 from the true servals, given a new scientific name, and subsequently known as the servaline cat.

The servaline cat has the form and proportions of the serval. It also has the two horizontal black bands on the inside of the forelegs. But the large black spots and stripes of the serval are replaced by many dark flecks, closely set, giving a brownish colour to the whole fur. Superficially the two animals look quite different, and no suspicion was aroused until in 1915 a native in Sierra Leone brought in two kittens, one a serval and the other a servaline, said to be from the same litter. Some zoologists accepted this as evidence that the two represented one species. Allen, a leading American zoologist, claimed this to be wrong because the collection of skins in the American Museum of Natural History could be sorted into two clear groups, one large-spotted (serval) the other small-flecked (servaline), with no inter-grading. On the other hand, Pitman, Game Warden of Uganda, in a survey of skins worn by natives in Northern Rhodesia, found much inter-grading. Leading authorities to-day tend to accept this view, as expressed in 'Southern African Mammals,' by Ellerman, Morrison-Scott and Hayman, that there is only one species. [. . .] If the servaline cat is truly of the same species as the serval, the question still remains whether it is an occasional mutant (in common parlance, a freak), an unusual colour variation or a colour phase of the kind known to occur in other African wild cats. Perrault was fairly confident of the answer, which, while hardly acceptable to-day, reflects the state of knowledge in 1758. He speaks of the serval (or chat-pard) as "one of those animals which is engendered by the mixing of two different species and must be added to the number of novelties always being produced in Africa. According to the ideas of Aristotle, who sought reason for the large number of monsters in Africa, the dryness and the deserts compel the wild beasts to assemble in places where there is water. He supposed that this assemblage provided the occasion for different animals to mate and engender a new species."

The term Servaline is still sometimes used to indicate a Serval with very fine or almost indistinct spots, but it is now recognised as a variant pattern. Instead of large well defined markings, the servaline has smaller, but more numerous, markings (freckles) which provides better camouflage in some habitats. As with cheetahs and king cheetahs, both types can appear in a single litter. Studies indicate that black servals and freckled servalines (which are also darker in overall tone) come from moister areas. The servaline form occurs in dense vegetation and secondary forests, while the spotted serval is found in grasslands and open savannahs. The servaline is also said to be a little smaller than the bolder spotted form.

Savannah (serval x domestic cat) breeders are reproducing the white form in their breed by introducing the silver gene into the hybrids; though not the same as the wild serval mutation it resembles it closely. Small spotted "servaline type" hybrids have also been bred. Black Savannahs are being produced crossing servals with melanistic Bengals (derived from Asian Leopard Cat x domestic hybrids). At least one melanistic serval is currently owned as a pet. Savannahs will allow serval enthusiasts to own a domestic cat with the wild appearance.