All About Leopards

BASIC INFO -

The leopard (pronounced /ˈlɛpərd/; Panthera pardus) is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera; the other three being the tiger, lion and jaguar. Once distributed across southern Asia and Africa, from Korea to South Africa, the leopard's range of distribution has decreased radically due to hunting and loss of habitat, and the leopard now chiefly occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. There are fragmented populations in Pakistan, India, Indochina, Malaysia, and China. Due to the loss of range and declines in population, it is graded as a "Near Threatened" species. Its numbers are greater than other Panthera species, all of which face more acute conservation concerns.^[2]

The leopard has relatively short legs and a long body, with a large skull. It resembles the jaguar, although it is smaller and of slighter build. Its fur is marked with rosettes which lack internal spots, unlike those of the jaguar. Leopards that are melanistic, either completely black or very dark, are one of the big cats known as black panthers.

The species' success in the wild owes in part to its opportunistic hunting behaviour, its adaptability to habitats and its ability to move at up to approximately 58 kilometres (36 miles) an hour.^[3] The leopard consumes virtually any animal it can hunt down and catch. Its preferred habitat ranges from rainforest to desert terrains. Its ecological role is similar to the American cougar.

ETYMOLOGY (name) -

In antiquity, it was believed that a leopard was a hybrid of a lion and a panther, as is reflected in its name, a Greek compound of λέων leōn ("lion") and πάρδος pardos ("male panther"), the latter related to Sanskrit पृदाकु pṛdāku ("snake, tiger, panther").^[4][5]

A panther can be any of several species of large felid; in North America, the term refers to cougars; in South America, jaguars; and everywhere else, it refers to leopards.

Felis pardus was one of the species described in Linnaeus's 18th-century work, Systema Naturae.^[6]

The generic component of its modern scientific designation, Panthera pardus, is derived from Latin via Greek πάνθηρ pánthēr. A folk etymology held that it was a compound of παν pan ("all") and θηρ ("beast"). However, it is believed instead to derive from an Indo-Iranian word meaning "white-yellow, pale"; in Sanskrit, this word's reflex was पाण्डर pāṇḍara, from which was derived पुण्डरीक puṇḍárīka ("tiger", among other things), then borrowed into Greek.^[4][7][8]

SUBSPECIS -

As many as 27 leopard subspecies were once suggested, the number growing from the time of Linnaeus in the 18th century to that of Reginald Pocock in the early 20th. In 1996, Miththapala et al. revised this downward to just eight subspecies based on DNA analysis.^[15] Uphyrina et al. would concur in 2001 but split out a ninth separately, the Arabian leopard (P. pardus nimr). The latter researchers note the number might be an underestimation because of limited sampling of African leopards. Their list as follows:^[14]

• Indo-Chinese leopard (P. pardus delacouri) in Mainland Southeast Asia.
• Indian leopard (P. pardus fusca) in India, southeastern Nepal, and northern Bangladesh, and parts of Pakistan.
• North Chinese leopard (P. pardus japonensis) in China.
• Sri Lankan leopard (P. pardus kotiya) in Sri Lanka.
• Javan leopard (P. pardus melas) in Java.
• Amur leopard (P. pardus orientalis) in the Russian Far East, northern China, and Korea.
• African leopard (P. pardus pardus) in Africa.
• Persian leopard or Iranian leopard (P. pardus saxicolor) in Southwest Asia.
• Arabian leopard (P. pardus nimr) in Arabian Peninsula.

OLDER TAXONOMIC DIVISIONS -

 PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS -

The leopard is an agile and stealthy predator. Although smaller than the other members of the Panthera genus, the leopard is still able to take large prey given a massive skull that well utilizes powerful jaw muscles.^[16] Its body is comparatively long for a cat and its legs are short.^[17] Head and body length is between 125 and 165 cm (49 and 65 in) and the tail reaches 60 to 110 cm (24 to 43 in). Shoulder height is 45 to 80 cm (18 to 31 in). Males are about 30% larger than females,^[18] weighing 37 to 91 kg (82 to 200 lb) compared to 28 to 60 kg (62 to 130 lb) for females. The larger-bodied populations of leopard are generally found in areas isolated from competing large predators, especially from dominant big cats like lions and tigers.

Leopards may sometimes be confused with two other large spotted cats, the cheetah and the jaguar. However, the patterns of spots in each are different: the cheetah has simple spots, evenly distributed, the jaguar has polygonal rosettes of spots, many of which have a central spot, while the leopard normally has rounder, smaller rosettes without a central spot. The leopard is larger and much more muscular than the cheetah, but slightly smaller and more lightly built than the jaguar. The leopard's rosettes are circular in East Africa but tend to be squarer in southern Africa.^[17]

Leopards have been reported to reach 21 years of age in captivity.

VARIANT COLORATION -

A melanistic morph of the leopard occurs, particularly in mountainous areas and rain forests. The black color is heritable and caused by recessive gene loci.^[20] (While they are commonly called black panthers, the term is not exclusive to leopards; it also applies to melanistic jaguars.)

A melanistic leopard, or "black panther"

Melanistic leopards are particularly common on the Malayan Peninsula: early reports suggested up to half of all leopards there are black, but a 2007 camera-trap study in Taman Negara National Park found that all specimens were melanistic.^[21] Although the benefits of melanism are difficult to interpret, it may serve as camouflage in the rainforest habitat. Genetic research has found four independent origins for melanism in cats, suggesting that there must be some adaptive advantage.^[20] Another possibility is that the color variation is a relic adaptation to an epidemic; genes causing melanism can also affect the immune system.^[21]

In Africa, black leopards are much less common as melanism is not an adaptive advantage on the savanna: dark coloration provides poor camouflage and makes hunting difficult. Estimates are as low as one in 80 or 100. In the dense forests of the Ethiopian Highlands, however, the black leopard is much more common than in Africa generally; as many as one in five leopards may be melanistic.^[22]

Pseudo-melanism (abundism) occurs in leopards. The spots are more densely packed than normal and merge to obscure the background colour.

A pseudo-melanistic leopard has a normal background color, but its excessive markings have coalesced so that its back seems to be entirely black. In some specimens, the area of solid black extends down the flanks and limbs; only a few lateral streaks of golden-brown indicate the presence of normal background colour. Any spots on the flanks and limbs that have not merged into the mass of swirls and stripes are unusually small and discrete, rather than forming rosettes. The face and underparts are paler and dappled like those of ordinary spotted leopards. These melanistic leopards are often referred to as "black panthers".^[23]

In a paper about panthers and ounces of Asia, Reginald Innes Pocock used a photo of a leopard skin from southern India; it had large black-rimmed blotches, each containing a number of dots and it resembled the pattern of a jaguar or clouded leopard. Another of Pocock's leopard skins from southern India had the normal rosettes broken up and fused and so much additional pigment that the animal looked like a black leopard streaked and speckled with yellow.

Male Persian leopard with atypical, somewhat jaguar-like coat pattern (Wilhelma, Germany)

Most other colour morphs of leopards are known only from paintings or museum specimens. There have been very rare examples where the spots of a normal black leopard have coalesced to give a jet black leopard with no visible markings. They may form swirls and, in some places, solid black areas. Unlike a true black leopard the tawny background colour is visible in places. One pseudo-melanistic leopard had a tawny orange coat with coalescing rosettes and spots, but white belly with normal black spots (like a black-and-tan dog).

A 1910 description of a pseudo-melanistic leopard:

There is, however, a peculiar dark phase in South Africa, a specimen of which was obtained in 1885 in hilly land covered with scrub-jungle, near Grahamstown. The ground-colour of this animal was a rich tawny, with an orange tinge; but the spots, instead of being of the usual rosette-like form, were nearly all small and solid, like those on the head of an ordinary leopard; while from the top of the head to near the root of the tail the spots became almost confluent, producing the appearance of a broad streak of black running down the back. A second skin had the black area embracing nearly the whole of the back and flanks, without showing any trace of the spots, while in those portions of the skin where the latter remained they were of the same form as in the first specimen. Two other specimens are known; the whole four having been obtained from the Albany district. These dark-coloured South African leopards differ from the black leopards of the northern and eastern parts of Africa and Asia in that while in the latter the rosette-like spots are always retained and clearly visible, in the former the rosettes are lost – as, indeed, is to a considerable extent often the case in ordinary African leopards – and all trace of spots disappears from the blacker portions of the skin.

—Lydekker, R. (1910), Harmsworth Natural History

Another pseudo-melanistic leopard skin was described in 1915 by Holdridge Ozro Collins who had purchased it in 1912. It had been killed in Malabar, India that same year.

The wide black portion, which glistens like the sheen of silk velvet, extends from the top of the head to the extremity of the tail entirely free from any white or tawny hairs … In the tiger, the stripes are black, of a uniform character, upon a tawny background, and they run in parallel lines from the centre of the back to the belly. In this skin, the stripes are almost golden yellow, without the uniformity and parallelism of the tiger characteristics, and they extend along the sides in labyrinthine graceful curls and circles, several inches below the wide shimmering black continuous course of the back. The extreme edges around the legs and belly are white and spotted like the skin of a leopard … The skin is larger than that of a leopard but smaller than that of a full grown tiger.

—Collins, Holdridge Ozro (1915)

In May 1936, the British Natural History Museum exhibited the mounted skin of an unusual Somali leopard. The pelt was richly decorated with an intricate pattern of swirling stripes, blotches, curls and fine-line traceries. This is different from a spotted leopard, but similar to a king cheetah hence the modern cryptozoology term king leopard. Between 1885 and 1934, six pseudo-melanistic leopards were recorded in the Albany and Grahamstown districts of South Africa. This indicated a mutation in the local leopard population. Other king leopards have been recorded from Malabar in southwestern India. Shooting for trophies may have wiped out these populations.

 HUNTING -

Leopards are opportunistic hunters. Although mid-sized animals are preferred, the leopard will eat anything from dung beetles to 900 kg (1,984 lb) male giant elands.^[16] Their diet consists mostly of ungulates and monkeys, but rodents, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish are also eaten.^[26] In Africa, mid-sized antelopes provide a majority of the leopard's prey, especially impala and Thomson's gazelles.^[27] In Asia the leopard preys on deer such as chitals and muntjacs as well as various Asian antelopes and Ibex. Prey preference estimates in southern India showed that the most favoured prey of the leopard was the chital.^[28] A study at the Wolong Reserve in China revealed how adaptable the leopard's hunting behaviour is: over the course of seven years the vegetative cover receded, and the animals opportunistically shifted from primarily consuming tufted deer to instead pursuing bamboo rats and other smaller prey.^[29]

Leopard resting on a tree

The leopard stalks its prey silently and at the last minute pounces on its prey and strangles its throat with a quick bite. Leopards often hide their kills in dense vegetation or take them up trees,^[27] and are capable of carrying animals up to three times their own weight this way. The Leopard is also the only Big Cat that can carry its prey up into a tree. One survey of nearly 30 research papers found preferred prey weights of 10 to 40 kg (22-88 lb), with 25 kg (55 lb) most preferred. Along with impala and chital, a preference for bushbuck and common duiker was found. Other prey selection factors include a preference for prey in small herds, in dense habitat, and those that afford the predator a low risk of injury.

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