Serval objects from Nubia in Egyptian art. Like many other species of felid, servals are occasionally kept as pets, although their wild nature means that ownership of servals is regulated in most countries. On 7 April 1986, a healthy hybrid kitten between a male serval and a female domestic cat was born; this kitten was larger than a typical domestic kitten and resembled its father in its coat pattern. It appeared to have inherited a few domestic traits, such as tameness, from its mother. The hybrid cat may have a doglike habit of following its owner about, and can be a
Serval that no such specimen had been identified by him or his colleagues, and that it differed considerably from the common serval. In 1944, Pocock identified three races of the serval from northern Africa. Three subspecies are recognised as valid since 2017: The phylogenetic relationships of the serval have remained in dispute; in 1997, palaeontologists M. C. McKenna and S. K. Bell classified "Leptailurus" as a subgenus of "Felis", while others like O. R. P. Bininda-Edmonds (of the Technical University of Munich) have grouped it with "Felis", "Lynx" and "Caracal". Studies in the 2000s and the 2010s show that the serval,