Showing posts with label Leopard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leopard. Show all posts

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Leopard Description

Leopards can be confused for jaguars. However, they live in entirely different places. The jaguar is the largest cat in Central and South America and the leopard is the largest spotted cat cat in Africa and Asia.

They are both powerful looking, large wildcats that have relatively short legs. However on a strict comparison of size and weight, the jaguar wins. Leopards are excellent climbers and jumpers. You often see them in trees.

They leopard has a spotted - rosetted - coat. The maximum overall length including tail is around 2.4 meters. They vary considerably in size throughout their wide distribution as does the nature of their fur. Males can be 50% heavier than females.  Weights range between 21 and 65 kilograms. They are the 5th largest wildcat species.

Leopard cub - Photo copyright Tony Yeomans

The photograph above was taken by Tony Yeomans in Yala National Park, Sri Lanka (map below). He says the leopard was 9 months old. See Tony's photostream on Flickr.

The rosettes merge into spots on the lower limbs and undersides of the leopard, where the coat is white. Leopard markings are used to identify an individual cat. The same applies to tigers. The leopard coat is very effective camouflage. The coat background color varies between golden to a buff gray. Leopards inhabiting forests are darker than those in open landscape. Black (melanistic) leopards are seen in southern India, Java, Malaysia and the Aberdere Mountains of Kenya (where also you will see black servals). A black leopard is called a black panther. Rarely there are albino leopards.

Yala NP location:


View Larger Map

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Leopard Kills Warthog Photo

This leopard was injured killing a warthog. You can see the wound on his shoulder. This is a fine photograph of a leopard resting during feeding on a warthog. The photographer is Stephen Mawby and you can see his photographs on Flickr by clicking on the following link: Photostream.

Injured leopard with part devoured warthog. Photo copyright Stephen Mawby

The photo was taken at the Sabie Sands Game Reserve. The map marks the spot. You'll have to zoom back, though, to put it in context! This link takes you to a Flickr map that is better as it shows more of Stephen's photographs and locations.


View Sabie Sand Game Reserve in a larger map

The leopard's prey is what is available in the area. What I mean is the leopard is an opportunist hunter. In the Kruger National Park, a study indicated that leopards killed one large prey per week. They stayed with the prey for average of 2.4 days. The typical prey in the Kruger NP was an impala.

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Are cougars and panthers the same?

The word "panthers" is usually used in the phrase "black panthers", meaning large black wild cats. The word "panther" is a generic word and not a scientific term meaning large wild cat. Whereas "cougar" is one of the many words describing the puma, which is the technically more correct word for the mountain lion. There are other names for this large wild cat.

Cougars can be black panthers. Black cougars will be melanistic cougars which are cougars that have turned black or very dark charcoal grey due to the presence of a recessive gene.

The word panther is also used to describe the jaguar or leopard especially black coated jaguars and leopards when as mentioned they are referred to as black panthers.

The generic word "panther" is never used to describe the lion or tiger.

Saturday, 14 March 2009

Leopard Deaths are Uninteresting

How can I say that leopard deaths are uninteresting? Well, to the world at large they are. It is as simple as that. The Times of India reports 69 leopards dead (killed?) in 8 weeks. Just another report. The loses were over wide area so they were not area specific. The reasons for these deaths are various including poisoning (this seems a preferred method as far as I can - see poisoning tigers), traps, accidents etc.

The bottom line, as usual is the underlying cause, which is traditional Asian medicine (the body parts of leopards are a "good substitute" for the harder to get tiger parts) and pelts, the skin of the leopard (the same applies to the tiger of course). Poaching to supply this trade and the authorities charged with protecting the leopard and who turn a blind eye (probably for a share of the profits) is so prevalent and common that it is both utterly predicable and therefore uninteresting or if you prefer devastating.

The tiger is going down the plug hole and so is the leopard and millions has been spent to protect these animals and it just does not work. The program of conservation is clearly failing. The problem is apathy and corruption.

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