54 Fun Facts About Leopard

What is the leopard's scientific name?

Panthera onca is the jaguar, Panthera leo the lion and Acinonyx jubatus the cheetah; the leopard is one of just five living Panthera species.

The saying that a leopard cannot change its spots comes from which ancient source?

The Bible has it in the Book of Jeremiah, where the prophet asks whether a leopard can change his spots. His point was that people long used to doing wrong are just as unlikely to turn good.

Which naturalist first gave the leopard a scientific name, in 1758?

Carl Linnaeus filed the leopard under Felis, the same genus he gave the house cat, in his 1758 Systema Naturae.

Which of these cats is a species of its own rather than a subspecies of leopard?

Snow leopard is a separate species, and DNA studies make the tiger its closest living relative, not its namesake.

An Ice Age leopard painted in Chauvet Cave hints that the cats once lived wild on which continent?

Europe had wild leopards through the Ice Age; they dragged kills into cave dens such as Los Rincones in Spain, where excavators found the prey bones they left behind.

Like mules, the leopons bred at a Japanese zoo from 1959 never managed to do what?

Have cubs of their own: the five leopons, a leopard-lion cross, left no descendants, and the zoo, criticised for breeding them, produced no more.

Which First Lady's leopard-skin coat set off a 1960s craze blamed for the deaths of some 250,000 leopards?

Jacqueline Kennedy's coat was the work of designer Oleg Cassini, who blamed himself for the slaughter and later became an animal activist.

A melanistic (dark-coated) leopard is commonly known as what?

A black panther keeps its rosettes, which show faintly through the dark coat in good light; black jaguars in the Americas go by the same name.

Two normally coloured leopards can have a black cub because the gene for a black coat is what kind of trait?

Recessive in leopards, so a black cub needs the gene from both parents; in jaguars it is the reverse, and a single dominant copy turns the coat black.

A rare leopard with a pinkish-red coat and tan rosettes, recorded in South Africa, goes by which fruity nickname?

'Strawberry' leopards have erythrism, a rare mutation that swaps the coat's black pigment for red-brown; a 2016 survey found records of just seven, all in north-east South Africa.

Among all wild cats, the leopard holds which distinction?

The widest distribution of any wild cat, from African rainforest to Russian snow, owes much to a menu of over 100 prey species, from insects and rodents to large antelope.

In which part of Africa have leopards lost the most ground?

North Africa has almost no leopards left, and West Africa's range is down about 95%, driven by lost habitat, vanishing prey and conflict with herders.

Which cat looks much like a leopard but has small spots inside its rosettes?

The jaguar has a dot or two inside each rosette, while a leopard's are empty; both patterns break up the cat's outline in dappled forest light.

A leopard can jump as high as which of these?

A basketball hoop hangs 3 metres up, and a leopard can spring that high; the same power lets it climb a tree carrying prey heavier than itself.

Leopards have been recorded killing which antelope, the largest in Africa?

Eland bulls can top 900 kg, more than ten times a big leopard's weight, yet the cat usually picks prey of 10 to 40 kg that it can carry off.

A leopard has been seen dragging off the carcass of which young animal, weighing 100 kg or more?

A giraffe calf that size outweighs most leopards, but powerful jaw and shoulder muscles let the cat haul a carcass heavier than itself up into a tree.

How does a leopard typically kill large prey?

Strangling it by the throat is the rule for big prey, held until it suffocates; small prey gets a bite to the back of the neck, after a stalk to within about 5 metres.

Of Africa's large predators, the leopard is dominant over only which one?

The cheetah is the one rival a leopard can bully, and leopards are known to kill cheetahs and their cubs; every other big predator has size or pack numbers on its side.

In South Africa's Sabi Sand Game Reserve, which animal causes a sizeable share of leopard deaths?

Lions will kill a leopard they catch, so the smaller cat rests in trees to stay unnoticed and hoists its meals up out of reach.

In South Africa's Sabi Sand reserve, which animals steal more leopard kills than any other?

Hyenas are the main thieves of leopard kills there, which is why a leopard hoists a carcass into a tree, where a hyena cannot follow.

In Asia, besides the tiger, which pack-living predator dominates leopards during encounters?

The dhole is a wild dog that hunts in packs, enough to chase a leopard off a kill; tiger, leopard and dhole share a forest by taking prey of different sizes.

Why do male leopards sometimes kill another male's cubs?

To mate with the mother: a female who loses her litter soon comes back into heat, so mothers may pair with several males, which seems to discourage the killing.

Leopard cubs usually stay with their mother for roughly how long?

About 18 months is typical, long after weaning at three months; once they do leave, sibling cubs may keep travelling together for months.

Which island in the Indian Ocean has the leopard as its top predator, with no tigers or lions to rival it?

Sri Lanka's leopard is the island's apex predator, a rank the same cat never holds where it shares ground with lions or tigers.

As of its 2023 assessment, how does the IUCN Red List classify the leopard?

Vulnerable is one step worse than the Near Threatened rating the leopard used to hold; it was moved up after vanishing from most of its historic range.

South Africa's Shembe Church wears leopard skins at its ceremonies; what has the group Panthera given members to spare wild cats?

Synthetic fur capes let worshippers keep the tradition without a leopard dying for it, and the church's demand for real skins has fallen since.

Leopards living among people in India have been found to prey heavily on which animals?

Dogs were the biggest single item in scat studies from Maharashtra farmland and the edge of Jaipur, where leopards live almost wholly on domestic animals.

In Greek mythology the leopard was a symbol of which god?

Dionysus rides on a leopard's back or drives a chariot drawn by a pair of them in Greek art, and he often wears the big cat's pelt over his robe.

The leopard stands for the king's power on the famous brass plaques of which West African kingdom?

Benin's oba was king of the town as the leopard was king of the bush, so palace brass-casters paired the two again and again, and the oba kept tame leopards to parade on great occasions.

Only the Ashanti king could sit on a stool carved as a leopard or as which other animal?

Elephant and leopard stools were the Asante king's alone, the seat resting on a carved beast that stood for his courage and might.

Rudyard Kipling's 'How the Leopard Got His Spots' appears in which collection?

In the Just So Stories tale, the Ethiopian presses his five fingertips all over the sandy leopard, leaving clusters of black marks so it can vanish in the forest shadows.

A leopard plays a key role in which 1938 Hollywood screwball comedy?

Bringing Up Baby saddles Cary Grant's fossil expert with Katharine Hepburn's heiress and her tame leopard, Baby; the farce peaks when she frees a vicious circus leopard by mistake.

In medieval heraldry, as on England's royal arms, how is a leopard usually drawn?

Spotless and maned, like a lion, because it was the same beast under another name: heralds called a lion a leopard when it walked along with its face turned to the viewer.

Which African ruler made a leopard-skin hat his trademark during three decades in power?

Mobutu Sese Seko made a leopard-skin hat and a carved cane the symbols of his rule over Zaire, borrowing the big cat's old standing as a badge of chiefly power.

The man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag was finally shot by which British hunter and author?

Jim Corbett shot it on the last night he had allowed himself before giving up, after traps and poison had failed; he later turned to conservation, and an Indian national park was renamed in his memory.

The Leopard of Rudraprayag turned man-eater in 1918; its hunter blamed which disaster?

A flu epidemic killed hill villagers faster than they could be cremated, so bodies were left in the valleys; the leopard scavenged them and turned to the living when the supply ran out.

Apple named two versions of which product Leopard and Snow Leopard?

Mac OS X wore big-cat names for a decade; Snow Leopard kept Leopard's because it refined the same system rather than replacing it, ending up smaller and faster.

In 1235 the Holy Roman Emperor sent Henry III three leopards; where were they kept?

The Tower of London kept a royal menagerie for some 600 years; the gift, recorded as leopards but perhaps lions, matched the three big cats on Henry's shield, and a polar bear that fished in the Thames later joined them.

Which leopard subspecies grows a long, dense coat for snowy winters and is often called the world's rarest big cat?

The Amur leopard was close to vanishing when Russia set aside the Land of the Leopard National Park in 2012, covering most of the cat's remaining habitat.

The Amur leopard is native to southeastern Russia and which other country?

China shares a single Amur leopard population with Russia: the cats cross the forested border freely, so the two countries pool their camera-trap photos to count them.

Which is the smallest leopard subspecies?

As of 2023 only about 100-120 remain, in Oman and Yemen; it is possibly extinct in Saudi Arabia.

The leopard is one of the Big Five with the lion, rhinoceros, elephant and which other animal?

African buffalo completes the set; big-game hunters coined the label for the animals they found hardest to hunt on foot, and safari guides later took it over as a must-see list.

When are leopards mainly active?

From dusk till dawn is when they hunt and travel; by day they lie up under cover, among rocks or along a branch, though forest leopards in West Africa have been found hunting by day and at twilight.

How do leopards usually come down out of a tree?

Headfirst descent is a knack only a few cats share, the clouded leopard and margay among them; leopards are at home aloft, resting on branches by day and feeding on kills they have hauled up.

In the Kalahari Desert, leopards can go days without drinking because they get most of their water from what?

Their prey's body fluids give leopards most of the water they need, which is how a cat at home in rainforest can also hold a desert territory with no standing water for much of the year.

India's leopard count, nearly 14,000 in 2022, relies on camera traps set for the national census of which animal?

Tigers are the target, but every leopard that walks past the same cameras is logged too; the survey keeps to forested tiger country, so leopards in farmland, desert and the high Himalaya go uncounted.

Outside the mating season, how do adult leopards live?

Alone is the rule: each adult keeps its own territory and warns others off with scent and claw marks, and a male and female meet only briefly to mate, leaving the mother to raise the cubs.

The leopard's most notable vocalisation is usually described as what?

A sawing roar is a rasping, back-and-forth sound like a saw cutting wood, and no two are quite alike: researchers in Tanzania could tell individual leopards apart from recordings of their calls.

Which character in Kipling's The Jungle Book is a black leopard?

Bagheera was born in a cage in a king's palace and broke the lock to escape; Kipling paints him inky black, his markings showing in certain lights like watered silk, as a real black leopard's do.

The oldest leopard fossils yet found come from which region?

Eastern Africa's fossil beds, better known for early human remains, hold the oldest leopards, the main reason the species is thought to have arisen in Africa and spread across Asia afterwards.

Which Winter Olympics took a leopard as a mascot while its host bred the cats nearby for release into the wild?

Sochi 2014 made the Leopard one of its three mascots; the breeding centre in Sochi National Park took in its first cats from Turkmenistan in 2009, and only their offspring are released into the mountains.

Leopard cubs are born with their eyes closed; roughly how long do they stay shut?

About a week passes before the cubs can see, and for much longer the mother keeps them hidden among rocks or in thick cover, shifting them to a fresh den often so that lions and other predators do not find them.

Hemingway opens a famous story with the frozen carcass of a leopard lying near the summit of which peak?

Mount Kilimanjaro really did hold one: a climber found the frozen cat on the crater rim in 1926, at a spot still called Leopard Point, a decade before Hemingway wrote that no one had explained what it sought there.

How do researchers tell one wild leopard from another in camera-trap photos?

By its spot pattern: no two coats match, much like fingerprints, so a photo is enough to recognise a leopard, follow it for years and count a whole population without ever catching one.