Leopard

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Leopards

Acute Cat Senses: As a member of the cat family, leopards share many of the same characteristics as other cats, such as tigers, bobcats, lynx and even the family cat. Leopards, like other cats, have acute senses. Their large, funnel-shaped ears can easily detect the rustling sounds of prey. Their forward-looking eyes allow them to see for long distances, and the flexible pupil can contract to a pinhole in bright light and expand widely to see in the dark.

Coat of Many Colors: Of all the cats, however, the leopard's fur color varies the most between individuals. Color usually is a reflection of geographic location. Leopards of the desert are pale yellow; those living among grasses take on a deeper shade of yellow; and in dense forests melanic leopards, known as black panthers, are comfortable hidden among the trees.

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Taking To the Trees: Leopards are just at home in trees as they are on the ground. They spend entire days lounging on a tree branch, and can descend a tree headfirst.

Superior Strength: The leopard is so powerful that it can haul an animal carcass three times its own weight up a tree, where it will feed safe from scavengers like hyenas and lions.

A Solitary Species: Leopards are solitary cats with large home ranges. Males have exceptionally large ranges in comparison to females, and tend to be very aggressive toward one another. Male-male encounters often end fatally.

Cough, Cough: Leopards announce their presence to other leopards with a rasping or sawing cough.

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The Leopard

Leopard Profile
Leopards are graceful and powerful big cats closely related to lions, tigers, and jaguars. They live in sub-Saharan Africa, northeast Africa, Central Asia, India, and China. However, many of their populations are endangered, especially outside of Africa.

The leopard is so strong and comfortable in trees that it often hauls its kills into the branches. By dragging the bodies of large animals aloft it hopes to keep them safe from scavengers such as hyenas. Leopards can also hunt from trees, where their spotted coats allow them to blend with the leaves until they spring with a deadly pounce. These nocturnal predators also stalk antelope, deer, and pigs by stealthy movements in the tall grass. When human settlements are present, leopards often attack dogs and, occasionally, people.

Leopards are strong swimmers and very much at home in the water, where they sometimes eat fish or crabs.

Female leopards can give birth at any time of the year. They usually have two grayish cubs with barely visible spots. The mother hides her cubs and moves them from one safe location to the next until they are old enough to begin playing and learning to hunt. Cubs live with their mothers for about two years—otherwise, leopards are solitary animals.

Most leopards are light colored with distinctive dark spots that are called rosettes, because they resemble the shape of a rose. Black leopards, which appear to be almost solid in color because their spots are hard to distinguish, are commonly called black panthers.

Leopard Range (In the yellow)

Fast Facts

Type: Mammal
Diet: Carnivore
Size: Head and body, 4.25 to 6.25 ft (1.3 to 1.9 m); Tail, 3.5 to 4.5 ft (1.1 to 1.4 m)
Weight: 66 to 176 lbs (30 to 80 kg)
Protection status: Endangered

Size relative to a 6-ft (2-m) man

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The Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard Profile
These beautiful gray leopards live in the mountains of Central Asia. They are insulated by thick hair, and their wide, fur-covered feet act as natural snowshoes. These cats have powerful legs and are tremendous leapers, able to jump as far as 50 feet (15 meters). Snow leopards use their long tails for balance and as blankets to cover sensitive body parts against the severe mountain chill.

Snow leopards prey upon the blue sheep (bharal) of Tibet and the Himalayas, and mountain ibex found over most of the rest of their range. Though these powerful predators can kill animals three times their weight, they also eat smaller fare, such as marmots, hares, and game birds.

One Indian snow leopard, protected and observed in a national park, is reported to have consumed five blue sheep, nine Tibetan woolly hares, twenty-five marmots, five domestic goats, one domestic sheep, and fifteen birds in a single year.

As these numbers indicate, snow leopards sometimes have a taste for domestic animals, which has led to many deaths of the big cats at the hands of herders.

These endangered cats appear to be in dramatic decline because of such killings, and due to poaching driven by illegal trades in pelts and in body parts used for traditional Chinese medicine. Vanishing habitat and the decline of the cats' large mammal prey are also contributing factors.

Snow Leopard Range (In the yellow)

Fast Facts

Type: Mammal
Diet: Carnivore
Size: 4 to 5 ft (1.2 to 1.5 m); Tail, 36 in (91 cm)
Weight: 60 to 120 lbs (27 to 54 kg)
Protection status: Endangered

Size relative to a 6-ft (2-m) man

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Credit:

Information © AnimalPlanet.com
Information & Pictures © NationalGeographic.com