The Caçadores were the elite light infantry troops of the Portuguese Army, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Units of Caçadores – with features somewhat different from the original ones – continued to exist in the Portuguese Armed Forces until the 1970s, namely the Caçadores Especiais – several special forces companies of the Portuguese Army created by the Special Operations Troops Centre at the beginning of the 1960s and heavily employed throughout the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974) in Africa.