leopards - physical characteristics
The leopard is an agile and stealthy predator. Although smaller than the other members of the Panthera genus, the leopard is
still able to take large prey given a massive skull that well utilizes powerful jaw muscles. Its body is comparatively long for
a cat and its legs are short. Head and body length is between 90 and 190 cm (35 and 75 in), the tail reaches 60 to 110 cm (24 to
43 in). Shoulder height is 45 to 80 cm (18-31 in). Males are about 30% larger than females, weighing 37 to 91 kg (82 to 200 lbs)
compared to 28 to 60 kg (62 to 132 lbs) for females. The larger-bodied populations of leopard (such as the Javan leopard and the
leopards from the forested mountains and tropical rainforests of Africa) are generally found in areas isolated from competing large
predators, especially from dominant big cats like lions and tigers.
One of many spotted cats, a leopard may be mistaken for a cheetah or a jaguar. The leopard has rosettes rather than cheetah's simple
spots, but they lack internal spots, unlike the jaguar. The leopard is larger and less lanky than the cheetah but smaller than the
jaguar. The leopard's black, irregular rosettes serve as camouflage. They are circular in East Africa but tend to be square-shaped
in southern Africa.
variant colouration
A melanistic morph of the leopard occurs, particularly in mountainous areas and rain forests. The black color is heritable and
caused by recessive gene loci. (While they are commonly called black panthers, the term is not exclusive to leopards; it also applies
to melanistic jaguars.)
Melanistic leopards are particularly common on the Malayan Peninsula: early reports suggested up to half of all leopards there are
black, but a 2007 camera-trap study in Taman Negara National Park found that all specimens were melanistic. Although the benefits
of melanism are difficult to interpret, it may serve as camouflage in the rainforest habitat. Genetic research has found four independent
origins for melanism in cats, suggesting that there must be some adaptive advantage. Another possibility is that the color variation
is a relic adaptation to an epidemic; genes causing melanism can also affect the immune system.
In Africa, black leopards are much less common as melanism is not an adaptive advantage on the savanna: dark coloration provides poor
camouflage and makes hunting difficult. Estimates are as low as one in 80 or 100. In the dense forests of the Ethiopian Highlands,
however, the black leopard is much more common than in Africa generally; as many as one in five leopards may be melanistic.
A pseudo-melanistic leopard has a normal background color, but its excessive markings have coalesced so that its back seems to be
entirely black. In some specimens, the area of solid black extends down the flanks and limbs; only a few lateral streaks of golden-brown
indicate the presence of normal background colour. Any spots on the flanks and limbs that have not merged into the mass of swirls
and stripes are unusually small and discrete, rather than forming rosettes. The face and underparts are paler and dappled like those
of ordinary spotted leopards. These melanistic leopards are often incorrectly referred to by the general population as "black panthers".
In a paper about panthers and ounces of Asia, Reginald Innes Pocock used a photo of a leopard skin from southern India; it had large
black-rimmed blotches, each containing a number of dots and it resembled the pattern of a jaguar or clouded leopard. Another of Pocock's
leopard skins from southern India had the normal rosettes broken up and fused and so much additional pigment that the animal looked like
a black leopard streaked and speckled with yellow.
Most other colour morphs of leopards are known only from paintings or museum specimens. There have been very rare examples where the
spots of a normal black leopard have coalesced to give a jet black leopard with no visible markings. Pseudo-melanism (abundism) occurs
in leopards. The spots are more densely packed than normal and merge to largely obscure the background colour. They may form swirls and,
in some places, solid black areas. Unlike a true black leopard the tawny background colour is visible in places. One pseudo-melanistic
leopard had a tawny orange coat with coalescing rosettes and spots, but white belly with normal black spots (like a black-and-tan dog).
« back