Amur Leopard
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40 free Amur Leopard trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Amur leopard lives where few people expect a leopard to live: the cold, wintry edge of the Russian Far East and the neighbouring corner of China. It is a sprinter, a leaper and a climber, built for winters that would finish off its African cousins, and for decades it came closer to vanishing than almost any other big cat. This quiz covers the fun facts people look for most: how fast an Amur leopard can run and how far it can jump, what its spots are called, how its coat changes with the seasons, what it eats and how it raises its cubs. It also covers the places, people and campaigns behind its slow recovery. It suits animal lovers, students working on a big cat project and anyone who has watched one pace at a zoo and wanted to know more. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with a few facts worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01An Amur leopard can leap more than 19 feet in a single bound, but what top speed can it sprint at?
37 mph
37 mph is the top speed reported for the Amur leopard, and the cat can also jump up to 10 feet straight up.
Q 02Sometimes an Amur leopard wraps its long tail around its own body for what reason?
To keep warm
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.
Q 03Researchers tell Amur leopards apart because every cat's spots are unique, like which human feature?
Fingerprints
Fingerprints are the usual comparison: no two Amur leopards wear the same markings, so researchers can tell individual cats apart in camera-trap photos.
Q 04Which bigger cat shares the Amur leopard's Russian range and may kill leopards when prey is scarce?
Siberian tiger
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.
Q 05On the IUCN Red List, the Amur leopard holds which status, the last step before extinct in the wild?
Critically Endangered
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.
Q 06In one Russian reserve, Amur leopards hunt mostly hoofed prey but also take the cubs of which animal?
Asian black bear
Asian black bear cubs are on the menu there, a bold choice for a cat whose grown males weigh only 32 to 48 kg.
Q 07Amur leopards once ranged so widely that in the late 19th century they entered which Asian capital?
Seoul
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.
Q 08Land of the Leopard National Park, home of the Amur leopard, sits where Russia meets China and which country?
North Korea
North Korea shares just 17 km of border with Russia, and Amur leopards possibly slip across it as well as over the Chinese frontier.
Q 09An Amur leopard's tongue is covered in sharp rasps called papillae, which the cat uses for what task?
Scraping meat off bones
Scraping meat off bones is the job of those rasps; heavy keratin makes a cat's tongue rough enough to work like a file.
Q 10What flower-inspired name do biologists give the ring-shaped, dark-centred spots on an Amur leopard?
Rosettes
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.
Q 11Land of the Leopard, the Amur leopard's national park, lies 70 km from which Russian Pacific port?
Vladivostok
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.
Q 12To cope with snowy Russian winters, what happens to an Amur leopard's coat as the cold season sets in?
It grows much longer
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.
Q 13Apart from mothers raising their cubs, how do adult Amur leopards live and hunt?
On their own
Q 21The Amur leopard shares its name with a border waterway the Chinese call Heilongjiang, which means what?
Black Dragon River
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.
Q 22Amur leopard mothers with cubs are often found close to which kind of farm, a reliable larder in lean times?
Deer farms
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.
Q 23Fires that destroy Amur leopard habitat are often lit by farmers hoping to boost which edible wild plant?
Young ferns
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.
Q 14Most people picture leopards on African savannas, but the Amur leopard has adapted to which northern habitat?
Temperate forests
Temperate forests of the Russian Far East are its home, the northernmost part of the whole leopard species' range, with heavy snow each winter.
Q 15Although an Amur leopard can sprint fast, how does it usually catch the hoofed animals it feeds on?
By stalking and pouncing
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.
Q 16Why does a nimble Amur leopard carry away and hide a kill that it has not finished eating?
So rivals cannot take it
So rivals cannot take it: leopards are strong enough to drag carcasses heavier than themselves up into trees, out of reach of other predators.
Q 17Poachers target the Amur leopard chiefly for which part of the animal, once sold for $500 to $1,000 apiece?
Its skin
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.
Q 18Radio-tracking studies confirmed that young Amur leopards stay with their mother for roughly how long?
About two years
About two years is the norm, yet the cubs are weaned at three months and start learning to hunt soon after.
Q 19A female Amur leopard and her cub appeared in which 2006 BBC series narrated by David Attenborough?
Planet Earth
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.
Q 20The Amur leopard's scientific name begins with which genus, shared with the lion and the jaguar?
Panthera
Panthera holds the largest living members of the cat family, and a specially adapted larynx lets most of them roar.
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.
Q 24In 2007, conservationists persuaded Russia to reroute which planned project away from Amur leopard habitat?
An oil pipeline
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.
Q 25Which disease, usually associated with pet dogs, was found in a wild Amur leopard in Russia in 2015?
Distemper
Distemper in a single cat alarmed vets because the wild population is so small that one outbreak could reach every animal.
Q 26Which wildlife treaty lists the Amur leopard in Appendix I, banning all commercial trade in the cat?
CITES
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.
Q 27Like all leopards, the Amur leopard has a rasping, repeated roar named after which woodworking action?
Sawing
Sawing is the word for it: the call is a string of deep, repeated strokes that probably marks territory and attracts mates.
Q 28The Amur leopard is also named after which historical region covering all of today's Northeast China?
Manchuria
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.
Q 29Which Chinese province holds Hunchun reserve, where a camera trap caught an Amur leopard in 2010?
Jilin
Jilin lies just across the border from Russia's leopard park, and its Hunchun reserve adjoins the leopard's range on the Russian side.
Q 30Conservationists hope to found a second wild Amur leopard population in which Russian mountain range?
Sikhote-Alin
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.