16 interesting facts about leopards
- The elegant, powerfully built leopard has a long body, relatively short legs and a broad head. Its tawny coat is covered with dark, irregular circles called "rosette
s." - The most secretive and elusive of the large carnivores, the leopard is also the shrewdest.
- Like most cats, leopards are solitary creatures that hunt mainly at night.
- Leopards are the most successful and cunning among big cats.
- Leopards have a very beautiful coat with a tawny background and rosettes, that aids them in camouflage.
- The Snow Leopard is a most remarkable cat that operates in extremely difficult terrain and climate conditions at the top of the world - the Himalayas.
- The Clouded Leopard has the longest canines amongst cat species.
- The Amur Leopard is one of the most endangered animals in the world.
- Both lions and hyenas will take away a leopard's kill if they can. To prevent this leopards store their larger kills in trees where they can feed on them in relative safety.
- The Bornean Clouded Leopard is one of the most significant newly discovered mammalian species.
- Maneating leopards always operate at night since unlike tigers they never lose their fear of man and only enter human territories in the cover of darkness - according to famous hunter turned conservationist Jim Corbett. This makes them very difficult to counteract.
- Leopards are masters of stealth and extremely difficult to trace and locate in the wild.
- Leopards are the best tree climbers amongst big cats and are capable of taking prey that is twice their body weight, up a tree.
- Melanistic variants among leopards - black leopards - are known as panthers.
- Pound for pound, it is the strongest climber of the large cats and capable of killing prey larger than itself.
- Leopards are territorial animals and regularly mark and defend their domain against intruders.
