From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lynx[1]
Lynx canadensis, the Canadian lynx
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Felidae
Subfamily:	Felinae
Genus:	Lynx Kerr, 1792
Type species
Lynx lynx Linnaeus, 1758
Species
Lynx lynx Lynx canadensis Lynx pardinus Lynx rufus
The overall range of Lynx species.

A lynx (plural lynx) is any of four big-sized wild cats. All are members of the genus Lynx, but there is considerable confusion about the best way to classify felids at present, and some authorities classify them as part of the genus Felis. The Caracal, despite sometimes being called Persian lynx or African lynx, does not belong to this genus.

Appearance

Lynx lynx

Lynx have short tails and characteristic tufts of black hair on the tip of their ears. They have a ruff under the neck, which has black bars (not very visible), resembling a bow tie. They have large padded paws for walking on snow, and long whiskers on the face. The body color varies from medium brown to gold-ish to beige-white; and occasionally, is marked with dark brown spots, especially on the limbs. All species of lynx also have white fur on their chests, bellies and on the insides of their legs, which are extensions of the chest and belly fur. Also, the lynx's coloring, fur height and paw size varies by its climate range—in the Southwestern United States, the fur and color are short-haired, dark and the paws are smaller and less padded; as the lynx ranges to its colder northern climates, the fur gets progressively thicker (for warmth), the color gets lighter (for camouflage) and its paws enlarge and become more padded for snowy environments. Their paws may become larger than a human hand and or foot.

They have extremely good hearing and they also have 28 teeth, which, when paired with the jaw structure, stab deeply into their prey. This can be especially helpful to the lynx because they are not the most efficient hunters and they lose most of their prey to a variety of factors.

The smallest species are the Bobcat and the Canada Lynx, with average weights 10 to 13 kilograms (22 to 29 lb), while the largest is the Eurasian Lynx, with average weight 18 to 25 kilograms (40 to 55 lb), up to a reported maximum of 40 kilograms (88 lb), but there is considerable variation within species.

Behavior

Lynx are usually solitary, although small groups of lynx may travel and hunt together occasionally. Mating takes place in the late winter and they give birth from two to six kittens once a year. The gestation time of lynx is about 70 days. The young stay with the mother for one more winter, a total of around nine months, before they move out to live on their own as young adults. Lynx will create their dens in crevices or under ledges. They feed on a wide range of animals from white-tailed deer, reindeer, roe deer, small red deer, and chamois, to smaller, more usual prey: snowshoe hares, fish, fox, sheep, pets, squirrels, mice, turkeys and other birds, and goats. They also eat ptarmigan, voles and grouse.

Habitat

Lynx inhabit the high altitude forests with dense cover of shrubs, reeds, and tall grass. Although the cats hunt on the ground, they can climb trees and can swim swiftly, catching fish.

Range

Europe and Asia

Lynx pardinus, the Iberian lynx

The Eurasian Lynx

The Eurasian lynx ranges from central and northern Europe across Asia. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Eurasian lynx was considered extinct in the wild in Slovenia and Croatia. A resettlement project, begun in 1973, has successfully reintroduced lynx to the Slovenian Alps and the Croatian regions of Gorski Kotar and Velebit, including Croatia's Plitvice Lakes National Park and Risnjak National Park. In both countries, the lynx is listed as an endangered species and protected by law. Lynx-spotting can be arranged in cooperation with the Risnjak National Park. Several lynx resettlement projects begun in the 1970s have been successful in various regions of Switzerland. Since the 1990s, there have been numerous efforts to resettle the Eurasian lynx in Germany and since 2000 a small population can now be found in the Harz mountains near Bad Lauterberg. Lynx are found in the Białowieża Forest in northeastern Poland , in Estonia and in the northern and western parts of China, particularly the Tibetan Plateau. In Romania the numbers exceed 2,000, the largest population in Europe outside of Russia, although most experts consider the official population numbers to be overestimated.^[2] Lynx are more common in northern Europe, especially in Sweden, Estonia, Finland, and the northern parts of Russia. The Swedish population is estimated to be 1200–1500 individuals, spread all over the country but more common in middle Sweden and in the mountain range. Lynx population in Finland was 1900–2100 individuals in year 2008, and the number have been increasing every year since 1992. Its been estimated that lynx population in Finland is nowadays larger than ever before. ^[3] Lynx in Britain were wiped out in the 17th Century but there is a plan to reintroduce them to curb the numbers of deer.^{[citation needed]} The critically endangered Iberian lynx lives in southern Spain and formerly in eastern Portugal. There is a lynx reproduction center planned outside Silves in the Algarve in southern Portugal.

North America

Lynx rufus, the bobcat, California, USA

The Canadian lynx is common throughout the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska, and is particularly abundant throughout its northern range when snowshoe hare numbers are high. Canadian lynx have been observed as recently as 2006 in the Wet Mountains of Colorado. In recent years, a few lynx sightings were reported in the southern Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, specifically in the area from Mount Mitchell across to the Shope Creek Forest area in the Pisgah National Forest. Lynx are also found in the northern Appalachians. One lynx was even caught alive in a cage trap at Graystone Cabins near Barnardsville, North Carolina; the animal was later released into a wilderness area within Madison County, North Carolina. Although the USFWS officials still deny the presence of lynx in the southern Appalachians, the most recent sighting was reported in September 2007 in the Shope Creek Forest. USFWS officials have stated that if these sightings were actually lynx, they were most likely illegally-held pets, which had been released or had escaped.

The bobcat (L. rufus) ranges throughout most of North America.

Lineage

The four species of the Lynx genus are believed to have evolved from the "Issoire lynx", which is believed to have been the original lynx during the Pliocene epoch.

Legal status

Lynx fur coat

The hunting of lynx is illegal in many countries. The Iberian lynx is almost extinct and the killing of any individuals has been outlawed since the 1970s in Spain and Portugal.^[4] In 2000, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designated the Canadian Lynx a Threatened species in the lower 48 states.^[5]

National animal

The lynx is considered a national animal in the Republic of Macedonia^[6][7] and is displayed on the reverse of the Macedonian 5 denar coin.^[8] It is also the national animal of Romania.^{[citation needed]}

In popular culture

The Atari Lynx is a 16-bit handheld game console that was released by the Atari Corporation in 1989. The lynx was chosen to be the mascot for Ubuntu's next major release, Ubuntu 10.04.^[9] The popular Linux distribution has been dubbed the Lucid Lynx and will be an LTS (long-term support) version. On the chosen name, Mark Shuttleworth says: "The lynx is a thoughtful predator". Also used as the Minnesota Womens Basketball Team "Lynx".

See also

• Lynx (mythology)
• Wildcat, a small predator native to Europe, the western part of Asia, and Africa

References

External links

• SOS Lynx: Photos, news and information about the Iberian Lynx in English and Portuguese
• Canada Lynx in the Southern Rockies
• The Iberian Lynx The natural history of the Iberian Lynx
• The Nature Conservatory's Species Profile: Lynx
• Canada Lynx (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
• Lynx research in the Bavarian Forest National Park

From LoveToKnow 1911

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Lynx lynx

Translingual

Etymology

From Latin, from Ancient Greek λυγξ (lynx)

Wikipedia has an article on:

Lynx (cat)

Wikipedia

Proper noun

Lynx

1. (zoology) The taxonomic genus within the subfamily Felinae that comprises the lynxes.

Derived terms

Wikispecies has information on:

Lynx

Wikispecies

• Lynx canadensis
• Lynx lynx
• Lynx pardinus
• Lynx rufus

English

Wikipedia has an article on:

Lynx (constellation)

Wikipedia

Etymology 1

From Latin lynx, a "lynx". Named by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687. The constellation is said to be so faint that one needs the eyes of a lynx to see it.

Proper noun

Lynx

1. (astronomy) A faint spring constellation of the northern sky. It lies north of the constellation Cancer.

Derived terms

• Lyncis

Translations

Etymology 2

Proper noun

Lynx

1. (software) A popular text-only web browser.

See also

• Lynx (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia:Lynx (disambiguation)

From Wikispecies

Lynx lynx

Taxonavigation

Main Page
Cladus: Eukaryota
Supergroup: Unikonta
Cladus: Opisthokonta
Regnum: Animalia
Subregnum: Eumetazoa
Cladus: Bilateria
Cladus: Nephrozoa
Cladus: Deuterostomia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Infraphylum: Gnathostomata
Superclassis: Tetrapoda
Classis: Mammalia
Subclassis: Theria
Infraclassis: Placentalia
Superordo: Laurasiatheria
Ordo: Carnivora
Subordo: Feliformia
Familia: Felidae
Subfamilia: Felinae
Genus: Lynx
Species: L. canadensis - †L. issiodorensis - L. lynx - L. pardinus - L. rufus

Name

Lynx Kerr, 1792

Type species: Felis lynx Linnaeus, 1758

Synonyms

• Cervaria Gray, 1867
• Eucervaria Palmer, 1903
• Lynceus Gray, 1821
• Lynchus Jardine, 1834
• Lyncus Gray, 1825
• Pardina Kaup, 1829

References

• Lynx on Mammal Species of the World.
  Don E. Wilson & DeeAnn M. Reeder (editors). 2005. Mammal Species of the World. A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed).
• Linnaeus: Anim. Kingdom 1: 157.
• Mammal Species of the World, A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, 3rd edition, 2005 ISBN 0801882214

Vernacular names

From StrategyWiki, the free strategy guide and walkthrough wiki

Atari Lynx
Manufacturer	Atari
Active	1989—1994
Total Games	91 (17 present)
← (none)	(none) →

The Atari Lynx was released in 1989 and is Atari's only handheld game console. The Lynx was also the first portable system with a color display, and is also notable for its forward-looking features, advanced 3D graphics, and ambidextrous format.

It was developed as the "Handy" by Epyx in 1987, who faced financial problems, forcing them to sign partners on the project. Epyx eventually agreed that Atari would handle marketing and production while Epyx handled software. Atari changed the internal speaker and removed the thumb-stick on the control pad before releasing it as the Atari Lynx two years later, initially retailing in the US at $189.95. Atari then showed the Lynx to the press at the Summer 1989 CES.

Atari faced competition with Nintendo, as they had just revealed their Game Boy handheld, which was only $109. Nintendo had no problems supplying retailers with the Game Boy for the Christmas season while Atari only managed limited distribution of their Lynx by year's end. The Lynx had average sales in 1990, but the Game Boy still dominated the market.

In 1991, Atari relaunched the Lynx with a new marketing campaign, new packaging, slightly improved hardware, and a new sleek look. The new system (referred as the "Lynx II") featured rubber hand grips and a clearer backlit color screen with a power save option. It also replaced the monaural headphone jack of the original Lynx with one wired for stereo. The new packaging made the Lynx without accessories, dropping the price to $99. Although sales improved, Nintendo's Game Boy still dominated the handheld market. In May, 1991, Sega launched its handheld gaming system, the Game Gear, which featured a color screen and third party support. The handheld market quickly went to Nintendo and Sega. Once the Super Nintendo and Genesis came out, Atari focused its attention on the Atari Jaguar, dropping almost all support for the Atari Lynx.

From Wikia Gaming, your source for walkthroughs, games, guides, and more!

Atari Lynx

The Lynx was a handheld game console released by Atari in 1989. The Lynx holds the distinction of being the world's first handheld electronic game with a color LCD display. The system is also notable for its forward-looking features, advanced graphics, and ambidextrous layout. The Lynx was released in 1989, the same year as Nintendo's (monochromatic) Game Boy. However, the Lynx failed to achieve the critical mass required to attract quality third party developers, and was eventually abandoned.

Today, as with a lot of older consoles, there is still a small group of devoted fans, creating and selling games for the system. An emulator called Handy was released to play Lynx games on PCs in 2000.

Features

The Atari Lynx had several innovative features including it being the first color handheld, with a backlit display, a switchable right-handed/left-handed (upside down) configuration, and the ability to network with up to 17 other units via its "ComLynx" system (though most games would network eight or fewer players). ComLynx was originally developed to run over infrared links (and was codenamed RedEye). This was changed to a cable-based networking system before the final release.

The Lynx was also the first gaming console with hardware support for zooming/distortion of sprites, allowing fast pseudo-3D games with unrivaled quality at the time and a capacity for drawing filled polygons with limited CPU intervention. Blue Lightning, an After Burner clone, was especially notable and featured in TV advertising for the console.

The games were originally meant to be loaded from tape, but were later changed to load from ROM. The game data still needed to be copied from ROM to RAM before it could be used, so less memory was available and the games loaded slower than necessary.

History

The Lynx was Atari's second handheld game to make it to production, the first being the handheld electronic game Atari Touch Me. Atari had previously worked on several other handheld projects including the Breakout and Space Invaders, the Atari Cosmos portable/tabletop console, and the Atari Atlantis. However, those projects were shut down during development - some just short of their intended commercial release.

The Lynx system was originally developed by Epyx as the Handy. Planning and design of the console began in 1986 and completed in 1987. Epyx first showed the Handy system at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 1989. Facing financial difficulties, Epyx sought out partners. Atari and Epyx eventually agreed that Atari would handle production and marketing, while Epyx would handle software development.

Atari changed the internal speaker and removed the thumb-stick on the control pad before releasing it as the Lynx two years later, initially retailing in the US at US$189.95. Atari then showed the Lynx to the press at the Summer 1989 CES as the "Portable Color Entertainment System", which was changed to Lynx when actual consoles were distributed to resellers.

However, Nintendo's new Game Boy was also introduced at the 1989 CES. At $109, it was 58% the price of the Lynx, without the color or custom chips. Nintendo had no problems supplying retailers with the Game Boy for the Christmas season while Atari only managed limited distribution of their Lynx by year's end.

During 1990, the Lynx had moderate sales but Nintendo's Game Boy continued to gain market share. In 1991, Atari relaunched the Lynx with a new marketing campaign, new packaging, slightly improved hardware, and a new sleek look. The new system (referred to within Atari as the "Lynx II") featured rubber hand grips and a clearer backlit color screen with a power save option (which turned off the LCD panel's backlighting). It also replaced the monaural headphone jack of the original Lynx with one wired for stereo. The new packaging made available the Lynx without accessories, dropping the price to $99. Although sales improved, Nintendo still dominated the handheld market.

As with the actual console units, the game cartridges themselves evolved over the first year of the console's release. The first generation of cartridges were flat, but were designed in such a way as to be stackable. This design proved to be the most difficult to remove from either generation of console, and so a second design was introduced. This style, called "tabbed" or "ridged", used the same basic design as the original cartridges, with the addition of two small tabs on the cartridge's underside to aid in removal. The first, flat style, could be stacked on top of the newer cartridges, but the newer cartridges could not be easily stacked on each other, nor were they stored easily. Thus a third style, the "curved lip" style was produced, and all official and third-party cartridges during the console's lifespan were released (or re-released) using this style.

In May 1991, Sega launched its Game Gear portable gaming handheld. Also a color handheld, in comparison to the Lynx it had a higher cost, smaller bulk, and lower battery life. However, the Game Gear was backed up by significantly more popular titles and consequently the market became dominated by Nintendo followed by Sega in a distant second and the Lynx in third.

In 1994, Atari shifted its focus away from the Lynx. As Nintendo's Super Nintendo and Sega's Genesis/megadrive filled retailers' shelves, Atari refocused its efforts on its Jaguar console. A handful of games were released during this time, including Battlezone 2000. In 1996, Atari shut down its internal game development.

Telegames released a number of games in the second half of the 1990s, including a port of Raiden, a platformer called Fat Bobby, and an action sports game called Hyperdrome. At the end of the decade, Hasbro, the current owners of Atari at the time, released the rights to develop for the system to the public domain. Since then a number of independent developers released games into the new decade, like Championship Rally, CyberVirus, and Winter Games. Some of the late 90s/early 2000s games were under development by other companies at one time, but rights to the game programs and all of the existing code was bought and finished by other developers.

Drawbacks

Though technologically superior to the Game Boy, a number of factors thwarted success of the unit:

• Nintendo's marketing muscle, domination of 3rd party developers, and quality first party game releases (particularly Tetris), ensured the Game Boy always enjoyed vastly superior software support.
• Nintendo's clout with retailers gave plenty of shelf space for Game Boy. Atari struggled with getting retailers to sell Lynx.
• The Lynx needed six batteries versus the four in the original Game Boy. The more powerful architecture of the Lynx, plus its backlit screen, would also drain a set of six AA batteries in less than four hours (five to six hours in the Lynx II).
• The original Lynx was also physically large and cumbersome. Atari had followed the advice of focus groups who wanted a bigger unit because that gave them "more" for their money.^[1] While the system is considered comfortable to hold, its portability was limited, and proved to be much harder to carry around than the Game Boy (which easily fits in a large pocket).
• The Lynx sold at a substantially higher price than the Game Boy, due to the cost of the screen and more elaborate custom chips.
• The original Lynx had problems with its cartridge slot. A cartridge was easy to insert, but because of their design, were difficult to remove from the system. The Lynx II remedied this.
• The developer's kit for the Lynx was expensive and required an Amiga computer (Atari's own ST computers could not be used). The two creators of the system, RJ Mical and Dave Needle, were also members of the Amiga design team and much to the frustration of Atari, the Amiga was used as the software development platform.

Technical specifications

• MOS 65SC02 processor running at up to 4 MHz (~3.6 MHz average)
  • 8-bit CPU, 16-bit address space
  • Sound engine
    • 4 channel sound (Lynx II with panning)
    • 8-bit DAC for each channel (4 channels × 8-bits/channel = 32 bits commonly quoted)
  • Video DMA driver for liquid-crystal display
    • 4,096 color (12-bit) palette
    • 16 simultaneous colors (4 bits) from palette per scanline (more than 16 colors can be displayed by changing palettes after each scanline)
  • 8 System timers (2 reserved for LCD timing, one for UART)
  • Interrupt controller
  • UART (for ComLynx) (fixed format 8E1, up to 62500Bd)
  • 512 bytes of bootstrap and game-card loading ROM
• Suzy (16-bit custom CMOS chip running at 16 MHz)
  • Graphics engine
    • Hardware drawing support
    • Unlimited number of high-speed sprites with collision detection
    • Hardware high-speed sprite scaling, distortion, and tilting effects
    • Hardware decoding of compressed sprite data
    • Hardware clipping and multi-directional scrolling
    • Variable frame rate (up to 75 frames/second)
    • 160 x 102 standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels)
  • Math co-processor
    • Hardware 16-bit × 16-bit → 32-bit multiply with optional accumulation; 32-bit ÷ 16-bit → 16-bit divide
    • Parallel processing of CPU and a single multiply or a divide instruction
• RAM: 64 KB 120ns DRAM
• Storage: Cartridge - 128, 256 and 512 KB exist, up to 2 MB is possible with bank-switching logic.

Some (homebrew) carts with EEPROM to save hi-scores.

• Ports:
  • Headphone port (mini-DIN 3.5mm stereo; wired for mono on the original Lynx)
  • ComLynx (multiple unit communications, serial)
• LCD Screen: 3.5" diagonal
• Battery holder (six AA) ~4-5 hours