Beautifully stuffed Serval in peaceful reclining pose. The Serval has been stuffed with great attention to detail. The Serval has a chip. The serval (Leptailurus serval) is a mammal from the feline family. The scientific name of the species was published in 1776 as Felis serval by Johann Christian von Schreber.[2] The name 'serval' was used as early as 1765 by Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon for a spotted cat kept in the royal stables at Versailles at the time.[3] Buffon notes about the name that it was used by the Portuguese in the East Indies for a feline that the French called 'maraputé'. The species was placed in the genus Leptailurus by Nikolai Alekseevich Severtsov in 1858, in which it is the only species.