The leopard is one of the 5 extant species withinside the genus Panthera, a member of the Felidae. It happens in a huge variety in sub-Saharan Africa, in small elements of Western and Central Asia, at the Indian subcontinent to Southeast and East Asia. It is indexed as Vulnerable at the IUCN Red List due to the fact leopard populations are threatened with the aid of using habitat loss and fragmentation, and are declining in big elements of the worldwide variety. In Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuwait, Syria, Libya, Tunisia and maximum possibly in Morocco, leopard populations have already been extirpated.
Leopards are hunted illegally, and their frame elements are smuggled withinside the flora and fauna alternate for medicinal practices and decoration.
Compared to different wild cats, the leopard has surprisingly quick legs and a protracted frame with a big cranium. Its fur is marked with rosettes. It is comparable in look to the jaguar, however has a smaller, lighter physique, and its rosettes are usually smaller, extra densely packed and with out valuable spots. Both leopards and jaguars which are melanistic are called black panthers. The leopard is prominent with the aid of using its properly-camouflaged fur, opportunistic searching behaviour, extensive diet, strength, and its cappotential to evolve to a lot of habitats starting from rainforest to steppe, along with arid and montane regions. It can run at speeds of as much as . Leopard fossils had been additionally determined in Japan.
Etymology
The English call 'leopard' comes from or, that derives from and . Leopardos might be a compound of, that means lion, and . 'Panther' is any other not unusualplace call, derived from and ; The phrase λέοπάρδος in the beginning cited a cheetah.
The time-honored call Panthera originates in, which refers to a searching internet for catching wild beasts that had been utilized by the Romans in combats. The phonetically comparable way faded yellow, whitish or white. The particular call refers to a male panther. The phrase pardus is notion to originate from that means noticed like a leopard.
Characteristics
The leopard's fur is usually tender and thick, substantially softer at the stomach than at the again. Its pores and skin shade varies among people from faded yellowish to darkish golden with darkish spots grouped in rosettes. Its stomach is whitish and its ringed tail is shorter than its frame. Its scholars are spherical. Leopards dwelling in arid areas are faded cream, yellowish to ochraceous and rufous in shade; the ones dwelling in forests and mountains are a whole lot darker and deep golden. Spots fade closer to the white underbelly and the insides and decrease elements of the legs. Rosettes are round in East African leopard populations, and have a tendency to be squarish in Southern African and large in Asian leopard populations. The fur has a tendency to be grayish in less warm climates, and darkish golden in rain woodland habitats. The sample of the rosettes is specific in every individual.
Its fur has a tendency to develop longer in less warm climates. The defend hairs protective the basal hairs are quick, in face and head, and boom in period closer to the flanks and the stomach to approximately . Juveniles have woolly fur, and appear like darkish-colored because of the densely organized spots. Its white-tipped tail is ready lengthy, white beneath and with spots that shape incomplete bands closer to the tail's quit.
The leopard's rosettes vary from the ones of the jaguar, which might be darker and with smaller spots inside. The cheetah has small spherical spots with none rosettes.
The chromosomes consist of 4 acrocentric, 5 metacentric, seven submetacentric and telocentric pairs.
Skull
The biggest cranium recorded for a black panther from India, recorded in 1920, measured in basal period, and in breadth, and weighed . The cranium of a West African panther measured in basal period, and in breadth, and weighed .
Size and weight
The leopard is sexually dimorphic, men are large and heavier than females.
Usually, leopards are large in regions in which they may be on the pinnacle of the meals chain, with out aggressive limit from large predators consisting of lions and tigers. Some leopards in North Africa allegedly had been as big as Barbary lions. In 1913, an Algerian newspaper said a leopard killed that allegedly measured approximately in overall period. To compare, male lions degree from head to quit of tail.
The most weight of a wild leopard is ready, recorded in Southern Africa. It measured . An Indian leopard killed in Himachal Pradesh in 2016 measured with an anticipated weight of became possibly the most important recognized wild leopard.
Variant colouration
Melanistic leopards also are referred to as black panthers. Melanism in leopards is inherited as a recessive trait surprisingly to the noticed shape. Interbreeding in melanistic leopards produces a substantially smaller clutter length than is produced with the aid of using ordinary pairings.
The black panther is not unusualplace principal in tropical and subtropical wet forests just like the equatorial rainforest of the Malay Peninsula and the tropical rainforest at the slopes of a few African mountains consisting of Mount Kenya.
Between January 1996 and March 2009, leopards had been photographed at sixteen webweb sites withinside the Malay Peninsula in a sampling attempt of extra than 1,000 digital digicam entice nights. Of the 445 pics of melanistic leopards, 410 had been taken in observe webweb sites south of the Kra Isthmus, in which the non-melanistic morph became by no means photographed. These information suggest the close to-fixation of the darkish allele withinside the region. The predicted time for the fixation of this recessive allele because of genetic flow by myself ranged from approximately 1,a hundred years to approximately a hundred,000 years. Pseudomelanistic leopards have additionally been said.
In India, 9 faded and white leopards had been said among 1905 and 1967.
Leopards showing erythrism had been recorded among 1990 and 2015 in South Africa's Madikwe Game Reserve and in Mpumalanga. The reason of this morph, called a "strawberry leopard" or "crimson panther", isn't always properly understood.
Taxonomy
Felis pardus became the medical call proposed with the aid of using Carl Linnaeus in 1758.
The time-honored call Panthera became first utilized by Lorenz Oken in 1816, who protected all of the recognized noticed cats into this group.
Oken's type became now no longer broadly accepted, and Felis or Leopardus became used because the time-honored call till the early twentieth century.
The leopard became decided as the sort species of Panthera with the aid of using Joel Asaph Allen in 1902.
In 1917, Reginald Innes Pocock additionally subordinated the tiger, lion, and jaguar to Panthera.
Subspecies
Following Linnaeus' first description, 27 leopard subspecies had been proposed with the aid of using naturalists among 1794 and 1956. Since 1996, most effective 8 subspecies were taken into consideration legitimate on the idea of mitochondrial evaluation. Later evaluation found out a 9th legitimate subspecies, the Arabian leopard.
Evolution
Results of a phylogenetic evaluation of chemical secretions among cats indicated that the leopard is carefully associated with the lion.
Results of phylogenetic research primarily based totally on nDNA and mtDNA evaluation confirmed that the ultimate not unusualplace ancestor of the Panthera and Neofelis genera is notion to have lived approximately . Neofelis diverged approximately from the Panthera lineage. The tiger diverged approximately, observed with the aid of using the snow leopard approximately and the leopard approximately . The leopard is a sister taxon to a clade inside Panthera, together with the lion and the jaguar.
The geographic foundation of the Panthera is maximum possibly northern Central Asia. The leopard-lion clade became dispensed withinside the Asian and African Palearctic due to the fact as a minimum the early Pliocene. The leopard-lion clade diverged 3.1–1.ninety five million years ago. Additionally, a 2016 observe found out that the mitochondrial genomes of the leopard, lion and snow leopard are extra just like every apart from their nuclear genomes, indicating that their ancestors hybridized with the snow leopard sooner or later of their evolution.
Fossils of leopard ancestors had been excavated in East Africa and South Asia, relationship again to the Pleistocene among 2 and . The contemporary-day leopard is usually recommended to have developed in Africa approximately and to have radiated throughout Asia approximately 0.2 and .
In Europe, the leopard came about as a minimum because the Pleistocene. Leopard-like fossil bones and enamel probably relationship to the Pliocene had been excavated in Perrier in France, northeast of London, and in Valdarno, Italy. Until 1940, comparable fossils relationship again to the Pleistocene had been excavated on the whole in loess and caves at forty webweb sites in Europe, along with Furninha Cave close to Lisbon, Genista Caves in Gibraltar, and Santander Province in northern Spain to numerous webweb sites throughout France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, withinside the north as much as Derby in England, withinside the east to Přerov withinside the Czech Republic and the Baranya in southern Hungary, Leopard fossils relationship to the Late Pleistocene had been determined in Biśnik Cave in south-valuable Poland. The oldest recognized leopard fossils excavated in Europe are approximately 600,000 years antique and had been determined withinside the Grotte du Vallonnet in France and close to Mauer in Germany. Leopard fossils relationship to the Pleistocene had been additionally excavated withinside the Japanese archipelago.
