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5 Fascinating Facts About the Leopard (Panthera Pardus)
5 Fascinating Facts About the Leopard (Panthera Pardus)
The leopard is the second largest big cat in Africa, after the lion. Its mysterious blend of elegance, strength, and elusiveness makes it possibly the most alluring of the renowned “Big Five.” This animal, which ranges in size from 40 to 90 kg and can be found in all types of settings from dense rainforest to parched semi-desert, is more robustly built than the cheetah, which is around the same size.
With nine subspecies identified by scientists, it is the most successful and ubiquitous of the big cats in the world, found not only in much of Africa but also in the deserts of Sinai and the snows of northern China. Leopards may eat anything from adult wildebeest to frogs. They may live shockingly close to people, from the suburbs of Mumbai to the outskirts of Nairobi, thanks to their exceptional stealth.
Information Regarding the Leopard
Leopards are infamous for dragging their prey up into trees so they can eat it at their leisure over a few days. A 125 kilogram juvenile giraffe that was cached at a height of 5.7 meters is one example of how their extraordinary strength enables them to move carcasses heavier than themselves. Only in situations where the cats are routinely challenged by other large predators, particularly lions and hyenas, can this behavior occur.
The genus Panthera, which has its origins in Asia, contains six lineages within the family Felidae, of which the leopard is one of five “big cats.” East Africa and South Asia have yielded fossils of its ancestors from the Pleistocene period (3.5–2 million years ago). It is estimated that the modern leopard originated in Africa between 0.5 and 0.8 million years ago, and that it spread to Asia between 0.3 and 0.2 million years ago.
Melanism is a genetic characteristic that is acquired by black panthers, making them melanistic leopards. They are only frequently found in equatorial woods, particularly on the slopes of mountains like Mount Kenya in Africa and the Malay Peninsula. Compared to normal leopards, melanistic leopards have much smaller litter sizes when they interbreed.
In southeast Asia, an adult leopard was found within the stomach of a 5.5-meter Burmese python.
Although they may occasionally seek humans as prey, leopards typically avoid people. India is where this has happened most frequently. The famous hunter Jim Corbett writes about shooting multiple people who had taken an incredible number of victims in his book The Man-eaters of Kumaon.
These included the Panar Leopard, which murdered over 400 people, and the Leopard of Rupraprayag, which killed over 125. Corbett hypothesized that the leopard had acquired a taste for human flesh from corpses abandoned in the bush during the latter event, which came after a cholera outbreak.
Once, a Rupraprayag leopard entered into an enclosure with forty goats, but instead of killing and devouring the animals, it murdered and devoured the 14-year-old boy who was asleep and watching over them.