Everyone’s favourite animal…

If you ask people on safari what their favourite animal is, they’ll almost always choose the leopard.

It’s certainly beautiful - particularly when lying in a picturesque tree somewhere - and it’s rare enough to be exciting when you see one.

However, I prefer the cheetah because watching a 70mph cheetah kill is like nothing else on Earth!

I’ve been on more than 250 game drives in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, but I’ve never seen a leopard kill or a leopard cub, and that takes some of the magic away.

It’s like having a long-distance relationship with someone you only see every month: yes, she might look good, and it’s always great to see her, but she doesn’t want kids, and it’s just not going to work out in the long run…!

Basic facts

Order: Carnivora

Family: Felidae

Species: Leopard

Scientific name: Panthera pardus

Subspecies: African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus), Indian leopard (Panthera pardus fusca), Javan leopard (Panthera pardus melas), Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr), Asia Minor leopard/Caucasian leopard/Persian leopard/Anatolian leopard (Panthera pardus tulliana), Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), Indochinese leopard (Panthera pardus delacouri), Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya).
(Note: The snow leopard or ounce is not actually a subspecies but a separate species in its own right.)

Mass: males 37–90 kg (81.6–198.4 lb), females 28–60 kg (61.7–132.3 lb)

Height at shoulder: males 60–70 cm (23.6–27.6 in), females 57–64 cm (22.4–25.2 in)

Length of head and body: 90 and 196 cm (2 ft 11.4 in and 6 ft 5.2 in)

Appearance: Big cat with a brown coat and black spots, short legs and a relatively large skull. The spots on the animal’s flanks are arranged in rings and therefore commonly called ‘rosettes’. Males are generally slightly bigger than females and have a double necklace of spots around the neck rather than a single one. The melanistic leopard or black panther is completely black due to the effects of a recessive gene. There is also such a thing as a strawberry leopard or pink panther (yes, really!). This is caused by erythrism but is rare and poorly understood.

Top speed: 58 km/h (36 mph)

Gestation period: 90 to 105 days

Lifespan: 12-17 years (up to a maximum of 24 years in captivity)

IUCN Red List Status: Vulnerable (Endangered in Central Asia and Sri Lanka and Critically Endangered in the Middle East, Russia and on the Indonesian island of Java)

Population: unknown, with estimates varying wildly from 14,000-700,000, decreasing

Habitat: Forest, savanna, shrubland, grassland, rocky areas (eg. inland cliffs, mountain peaks), desert

Distribution: 62 countries across Africa and Eurasia

Habitat

The leopard is very versatile and can survive in a wide range of environments, from dry deserts and humid rain forests to the cold forests of eastern Russia.

As a result, it is the most widely distributed of all the big cats.

If you’re on safari in Africa, you’ll typically find leopards in trees. They go there to protect their kills, and the guides generally know their favourite spots.

Hunting

Leopards are ambush hunters, so it’s unlikely to see a kill out in the open. They tend instead to lie in wait for their prey and pounce when they least expect it, usually at night.

Most kills come on the ground, but some leopards in the Serengeti have even been known to jump down on their prey from a tree!

Leopards kill and eat small, medium and large mammals including primates and ungulates such as the impala, bushbuck, common duiker and chital. They also kill smaller carnivores including the black-backed jackal, bat-eared fox, genet and cheetah.

They kill smaller animals with a bite to the back of the neck and larger ones by strangling them by the throat.

Overall, only 38% of hunts are successful, but this varies significantly: females with cubs have a kill rate of 28% while lone males and leopards in the Kalahari are only successful 14% of the time.

In Africa and India, the leopard is not the apex predator and therefore will usually drag its kills up a tree in order to protect them from lions and tigers.

In places with no lions or tigers such as Sri Lanka, Central Asia, the Middle East and African tropical rainforest, they no longer need to do this.

On average, female leopards eat around 2.8 kg (6 lb 3 oz) of meat a day and males 3.5 kg (7 lb 11 oz).

They get most of the water they need from the bodily fluids of their prey and from succulents such as gemsbok cucumbers, tsamma melon and Kalahari sour grass, which means they only have to drink every two or three days.

Breeding

Leopards can breed throughout the year, but in Manchuria and Siberia this is restricted to January and February.

The estrous cycle lasts about 46 days, and females remain in heat for 6-7 days.

Pregnancy lasts for just over three months, and the leopard will give birth in a secluded place such as a cave or a thicket.

A litter usually consists of two to four cubs, but 41-50% of cubs die in the first 12 months.

Cubs are born with closed eyes, and they only open after 4-9 days. They have thicker, more greyish fur than adults with less obvious spots.

At three months, they start to follow their mother around on hunts, and they can manage for themselves at a year old.

They remain with their mother until they are 18-24 months old.

Territory

Although males will interact with their partners and cubs at times, leopards are solitary creatures. In Kruger National Park, for example, they tend to keep around 1 km (1⁄2 mi) apart.

A leopard will defend its territory (or a kill) if threatened, but fights are rare.

The territories of males tend to be larger than those of females, and they often overlap with them. This is also the case with the territories of females and their cubs.

The exact size depends on habitat and the availability of prey:

• In the Serengeti, they are as small as 33–38 km² (12.5–14.5 sq mi) for males and 14–16 km² (5.5–6 sq mi) for females

• in northeastern Namibia, they are as large as 451 km² (174 sq mi) for males and 188 km² (72.5 sq mi) for females

• In Nepal's Bardia National Park, sizes of 48 km² (18.5 sq mi) for males and 5–7 km² (2–2.5 sq mi) for females are smaller than those generally observed in Africa.

Leopards have been seen walking 1–25 km (1⁄2–151⁄2 mi) across their range at night. They may even wander up to 75 km (47 mi) if disturbed.

Communication

Leopards produce a variety of noises:

• growling

• snarling

• meowing

• purring

• grunting

• ‘sawing’

• urr-urr sound (produced by cubs when calling their mother)

They also might communicate non-verbally using the white patches on the backs of their ears and the ends of their tails, but further research is required on that.

Incidentally, leopards can be identified by the number of spots in the top row on each side of their muzzles, so at Londolozi you might see the Tu Tones 3:2 young male or the Camp Pan 4:3 male.

Threats

The world leopard population is unknown, but it is definitely in decline, particularly in West and Central Africa, South-west and South-east Asia and China.

It is now found in only 25% of its historic global range.

The IUCN deems the leopard to be in its ‘vulnerable’ category, and it faces many threats to its existence:

• habitat loss due to deforestation

• predation

• conflict with humans (eg over livestock predation)

• trophy hunting

• poaching (for bushmeat or skins and other parts of the body used in ceremonial regalia).

Sources: Wikipedia, IUCN, Panthera.org, BBC Wildlife Magazine

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