Leopard Trivia
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54 free Leopard trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This leopard trivia quiz runs from the basics to the genuinely obscure. It covers the leopard's biology (why its rosettes differ from a jaguar's, how it kills, how far it can jump, why it hauls carcasses into trees), its nine subspecies from the tiny Arabian leopard to the critically endangered Amur leopard, and its odd corners: leopons, strawberry leopards, the recessive gene behind black panthers and the man-eaters Jim Corbett hunted in India. It also digs into the leopard in human culture: Dionysus and his leopard-drawn chariot, the Benin oba, the Ashanti leopard stool, Kipling's Just So Stories, Bringing Up Baby, and why the heraldic leopard looks exactly like a lion. Every question was checked against a primary reference (mostly the Wikipedia articles on the leopard and its subspecies) before publication, and each carries a citation. Play it for fun, use it for a pub quiz round, or take it after our Big Cats quiz to see how the leopard stacks up against its Panthera cousins.
30 of 54 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the leopard's scientific name?
Panthera pardus
Panthera onca is the jaguar, Panthera leo the lion and Acinonyx jubatus the cheetah; the leopard is one of just five living Panthera species.
Q 02The saying that a leopard cannot change its spots comes from which ancient source?
The Bible
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.
Q 03Which naturalist first gave the leopard a scientific name, in 1758?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus filed the leopard under Felis, the same genus he gave the house cat, in his 1758 Systema Naturae.
Q 04Which of these cats is a species of its own rather than a subspecies of leopard?
Snow leopard
Snow leopard is a separate species, and DNA studies make the tiger its closest living relative, not its namesake.
Q 05An Ice Age leopard painted in Chauvet Cave hints that the cats once lived wild on which continent?
Europe
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.
Q 06Like mules, the leopons bred at a Japanese zoo from 1959 never managed to do what?
Have cubs
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.
Q 07Which First Lady's leopard-skin coat set off a 1960s craze blamed for the deaths of some 250,000 leopards?
Jacqueline Kennedy
Jacqueline Kennedy's coat was the work of designer Oleg Cassini, who blamed himself for the slaughter and later became an animal activist.
Q 08A melanistic (dark-coated) leopard is commonly known as what?
Black panther
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.
Q 09Two normally coloured leopards can have a black cub because the gene for a black coat is what kind of trait?
Recessive
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.
Q 10A rare leopard with a pinkish-red coat and tan rosettes, recorded in South Africa, goes by which fruity nickname?
'Strawberry'
'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.
Q 11Among all wild cats, the leopard holds which distinction?
The widest distribution
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.
Q 12In which part of Africa have leopards lost the most ground?
North Africa
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.
Q 13Which cat looks much like a leopard but has small spots inside its rosettes?
The jaguar
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.
Q 21In Asia, besides the tiger, which pack-living predator dominates leopards during encounters?
The dhole
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.
Q 22Why do male leopards sometimes kill another male's cubs?
To mate with the mother
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.
Q 23Leopard cubs usually stay with their mother for roughly how long?
About 18 months
Q 14A leopard can jump as high as which of these?
Basketball hoop
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.
Q 15Leopards have been recorded killing which antelope, the largest in Africa?
Eland
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.
Q 16A leopard has been seen dragging off the carcass of which young animal, weighing 100 kg or more?
A giraffe
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.
Q 17How does a leopard typically kill large prey?
Strangling it by the throat
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.
Q 18Of Africa's large predators, the leopard is dominant over only which one?
The cheetah
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.
Q 19In South Africa's Sabi Sand Game Reserve, which animal causes a sizeable share of leopard deaths?
Lions
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.
Q 20In South Africa's Sabi Sand reserve, which animals steal more leopard kills than any other?
Hyenas
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.
About 18 months is typical, long after weaning at three months; once they do leave, sibling cubs may keep travelling together for months.
Q 24Which island in the Indian Ocean has the leopard as its top predator, with no tigers or lions to rival it?
Sri Lanka
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.
Q 25As of its 2023 assessment, how does the IUCN Red List classify the leopard?
Vulnerable
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.
Q 26South Africa's Shembe Church wears leopard skins at its ceremonies; what has the group Panthera given members to spare wild cats?
Synthetic fur capes
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.
Q 27Leopards living among people in India have been found to prey heavily on which animals?
Dogs
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.
Q 28In Greek mythology the leopard was a symbol of which god?
Dionysus
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.
Q 29The leopard stands for the king's power on the famous brass plaques of which West African kingdom?
Benin
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.
Q 30Only the Ashanti king could sit on a stool carved as a leopard or as which other animal?
Elephant
Elephant and leopard stools were the Asante king's alone, the seat resting on a carved beast that stood for his courage and might.