40 Fun Facts About Amur Leopard

An Amur leopard can leap more than 19 feet in a single bound, but what top speed can it sprint at?

37 mph is the top speed reported for the Amur leopard, and the cat can also jump up to 10 feet straight up.

Sometimes an Amur leopard wraps its long tail around its own body for what reason?

To keep warm is the reason: the Amur leopard has a long, furry tail that it sometimes curls around its body like a scarf in the cold.

Researchers tell Amur leopards apart because every cat's spots are unique, like which human feature?

Fingerprints are the usual comparison: no two Amur leopards wear the same markings, so researchers can tell individual cats apart in camera-trap photos.

Which bigger cat shares the Amur leopard's Russian range and may kill leopards when prey is scarce?

Siberian tiger territory overlaps the Amur leopard's, and in China's Changbai Mountains the leopards keep to higher ground, farther from roads, than their striped neighbours.

On the IUCN Red List, the Amur leopard holds which status, the last step before extinct in the wild?

Critically Endangered has been the Amur leopard's listing since 1996, and by 2007 as few as 19 to 26 were thought to survive before numbers began to climb.

In one Russian reserve, Amur leopards hunt mostly hoofed prey but also take the cubs of which animal?

Asian black bear cubs are on the menu there, a bold choice for a cat whose grown males weigh only 32 to 48 kg.

Amur leopards once ranged so widely that in the late 19th century they entered which Asian capital?

Seoul still had leopards entering the city in the late 1800s, but the cats were hunted hard for decades afterwards and the last one known in that country was caught in 1970.

Land of the Leopard National Park, home of the Amur leopard, sits where Russia meets China and which country?

North Korea shares just 17 km of border with Russia, and Amur leopards possibly slip across it as well as over the Chinese frontier.

An Amur leopard's tongue is covered in sharp rasps called papillae, which the cat uses for what task?

Scraping meat off bones is the job of those rasps; heavy keratin makes a cat's tongue rough enough to work like a file.

What flower-inspired name do biologists give the ring-shaped, dark-centred spots on an Amur leopard?

Rosettes on an Amur leopard's sides are about 5 cm across and widely spaced, with thick, unbroken rings that set the cat apart from other leopards.

Land of the Leopard, the Amur leopard's national park, lies 70 km from which Russian Pacific port?

Vladivostok is so close that a small part of the city itself falls inside the park, which was created in 2012 to guard the cat's last breeding grounds.

To cope with snowy Russian winters, what happens to an Amur leopard's coat as the cold season sets in?

It grows much longer: the hairs stretch from about 2.5 cm in summer to 7 cm in winter, and the coat fades to a paler cream as well.

Apart from mothers raising their cubs, how do adult Amur leopards live and hunt?

On their own is the rule: each Amur leopard keeps a territory that barely overlaps a neighbour's and reuses the same trails and resting spots for years.

Most people picture leopards on African savannas, but the Amur leopard has adapted to which northern habitat?

Temperate forests of the Russian Far East are its home, the northernmost part of the whole leopard species' range, with heavy snow each winter.

Although an Amur leopard can sprint fast, how does it usually catch the hoofed animals it feeds on?

By stalking and pouncing: a leopard creeps to within about 5 metres of its target before the final rush, then kills larger animals with a grip on the throat.

Why does a nimble Amur leopard carry away and hide a kill that it has not finished eating?

So rivals cannot take it: leopards are strong enough to drag carcasses heavier than themselves up into trees, out of reach of other predators.

Poachers target the Amur leopard chiefly for which part of the animal, once sold for $500 to $1,000 apiece?

Its skin is the prize: the thick spotted pelt is coveted by illegal traders, and villagers living beside the habitat do most of the killing.

Radio-tracking studies confirmed that young Amur leopards stay with their mother for roughly how long?

About two years is the norm, yet the cubs are weaned at three months and start learning to hunt soon after.

A female Amur leopard and her cub appeared in which 2006 BBC series narrated by David Attenborough?

Planet Earth filmed the pair in the snowy woods of Russia, and the mother and her cub turned up in two different episodes of the series.

The Amur leopard's scientific name begins with which genus, shared with the lion and the jaguar?

Panthera holds the largest living members of the cat family, and a specially adapted larynx lets most of them roar.

The Amur leopard shares its name with a border waterway the Chinese call Heilongjiang, which means what?

Black Dragon River is the meaning of Heilongjiang, the Chinese name for the Amur, which is 2,824 km long and forms part of the border between Russia's Far East and northeast China.

Amur leopard mothers with cubs are often found close to which kind of farm, a reliable larder in lean times?

Deer farms draw the cats in: the penned herds were raised for antler velvet sold to Asian pharmacies, and two males were once recorded fighting over one.

Fires that destroy Amur leopard habitat are often lit by farmers hoping to boost which edible wild plant?

Young ferns sprout after a burn and are sold in shops, served in restaurants and exported to China, while about a fifth of the region goes up in flames each year.

In 2007, conservationists persuaded Russia to reroute which planned project away from Amur leopard habitat?

An oil pipeline was due to run from central Siberia to the Pacific coast through the cats' last stronghold; an open-pit coal mine planned there was dropped too.

Which disease, usually associated with pet dogs, was found in a wild Amur leopard in Russia in 2015?

Distemper in a single cat alarmed vets because the wild population is so small that one outbreak could reach every animal.

Which wildlife treaty lists the Amur leopard in Appendix I, banning all commercial trade in the cat?

CITES gives the Amur leopard its strictest level of protection, yet smuggled pelts kept surfacing: at least seven skins or part-skins were seized in Russia and China in 14 months.

Like all leopards, the Amur leopard has a rasping, repeated roar named after which woodworking action?

Sawing is the word for it: the call is a string of deep, repeated strokes that probably marks territory and attracts mates.

The Amur leopard is also named after which historical region covering all of today's Northeast China?

Manchuria gives the cat one of its several aliases, the Manchurian leopard, a reminder that it once roamed across the region and down toward Beijing.

Which Chinese province holds Hunchun reserve, where a camera trap caught an Amur leopard in 2010?

Jilin lies just across the border from Russia's leopard park, and its Hunchun reserve adjoins the leopard's range on the Russian side.

Conservationists hope to found a second wild Amur leopard population in which Russian mountain range?

Sikhote-Alin lost its leopards in the middle of the 20th century, and three coastal patches there could support about 72 adults if the cats were returned.

Which German naturalist first described the Amur leopard in 1857, from a single East Asian specimen?

Hermann Schlegel was best known as a bird expert, and his interest in nature began with his father's butterfly collection.

Which reserve, the oldest in the Russian Far East, was merged into Land of the Leopard National Park in 2012?

Kedrovaya Pad, officially established in 1925, covers only about a thousandth of Primorsky Krai, and two leopard mothers have been seen raising litters there at the same time.

Which British zoologist coined the name Amur leopard in 1930 while comparing specimens in a London museum?

Reginald Pocock used the name for a specimen from Amur Bay, and although he studied mammals widely, he was also a noted expert on arachnids and millipedes.

Unusually for a big cat, what have some male Amur leopards been reported to do after mating with a female?

Help rear the young is the surprise: some males reportedly stay with the female after mating, while several males may trail and fight over her beforehand.

In winter, Amur leopards are linked with snow-free rocky slopes that face which compass direction?

South-facing rocky slopes stay free of snow in winter, a useful refuge for a cat living in a region of heavy snowfall.

Besides hoofed prey, Amur leopards are known to eat hares and which other small burrowing mammal?

Badgers, specifically Asian badgers, are taken along with hares, fowl and mice, small extras for a cat that mostly follows herds of larger prey.

The northern edge of the Amur leopard's historic Russian range began on the coast of which sea?

Sea of Japan shores marked the boundary at 44 degrees north, but in the 1970s the cat's Russian range shrank to about a fifth of its original extent.

Fitting a cat from Asia's Pacific edge, the orientalis in the Amur leopard's scientific name is Latin for what?

Eastern is the meaning: the label has stuck since 1857, when the cat was first described from a specimen collected on the Asian mainland.

Because newborn Amur leopard cubs are blind and tiny, what does their mother do for the first six to eight weeks?

Keeps them hidden is the answer: the cubs weigh only about half a kilogram at birth, and one tracked mother shifted her litter three times in a month.

Each Amur leopard's territory usually sits within which landscape feature, reaching to its natural edges?

A river basin is typical, and its size swings from 5,000 to 30,000 hectares depending on the cat's sex, age and family.