Domestication
As with the Cheetah, most Servals are friendly, good-natured, easily tamed, and make loving pets.

Servals have historically been kept as pets in Africa. The Ancient Egyptians worshipped the Serval as gods, and kept them as pets. More recently, they have been kept as pets in North America and Europe. Servals develop an very intense emotional bond to their original owners. Often, they will choose one member of the human family they live with to form an especially close and intense bond. However, once they have bonded with a particular human family, Servals do not easily accept new owners or surroundings, and they may become quite unhappy if separated or placed with other families. For this reason, anyone taking in a Serval must be willing to house and keep the Serval for its entire life. In the United States, owning a Serval requires special licensing from local, State, and Federal agencies. Having a Serval as a member of the family requires both commitment and planning. For those who do proceed down this path, the Serval makes an excellent, loving, and stunning pet.

Recently, Servals have been bred with the domestic cat to create a hybrid breed of domestic cat called the Savannah. These animals tend to be smaller than the Serval, but retain the beautiful spotted coat and color of the Serval. These animals are more tolerant of multiple owners, are more reliably litter trained, and tend to be more social with strangers. However, because the breeding can be difficult, the first generation (F1) animals tend to remain less common and quite expensive (as cat breeds go). Most states consider the product of a wild animal and a domestic cat to be a domestic cat, and therefore regulations for owning these animals tend to be similar to owning any domestic cat.
Vocalizations

Servals belong to the purring cats. A characteristic of purring is that it is carried out on both egressive and ingressive airstream. A purring serval can be heard on Robert Eklund's Ingressive Speech website or on Robert Eklund's Wildlife page .The Serval also has a high-pitched chirp, a hiss, cackle, growl, grunt, and meow.

Heraldry and literature
The Serval was the symbol of the Tomasi family, princes of Lampedusa, whose best-known member was Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of one of the most famous Italian novels of the 20th century, Il Gattopardo.