Breeding in captivity is quite difficult owing to the aggressive nature of male clouded leopards who frequently attack females when introduced to them. A new approach though, that employs grouping the animals together before they are one year of age, has proven to be more successful, raising some hope for sustenance of this wonderful specie of cats!

It is believed that leopards turn man-eaters when they are maimed or suffering tooth/gum problems which decrease to a great extent their innate capacity to hunt for game.

Molecular research has suggested that Javan leopards are craniometrically distinct from leopards from the rest of Asia, and are a distinct taxon that split off from other Asian leopards hundreds of thousands of years ago. In the Middle Pleistocene, they may have migrated to Java from South Asia across a land bridge that bypassed Sumatra and Borneo. – that is my theory, too!

More than 70 people in Uttarakhand, India get killed by man-eating leopards every year. Compared to this, only a handful of people die in a tiger or an elephant attack all over the country!

Arabian Leopards occupy remote and rugged high-mountain areas that provide security and vantage points. In the arid terrain of their habitat, Arabian leopards require large territories in order to find enough food and water to survive. The male’s territory usually overlaps those of one or more females, and is fiercely defended against other intruding males, although spatial overlap between male ranges is common.

The scientific name for Amur Leopard is Panthera pardus orientalis and they are found in the temperate forests of Far East Russia (Primorskii region of South East Russia) and China (Jilin, Heilongjiang province of north-east China) where there is large difference in temperature and precipitation. Their fur is thick compared to the other species of leopards.

According to a census in 2007, there are only 7 to 12 Amur Leopards in China and 20 to 25 Amur Leopards in Russia in the wild and around 200 in captivity all over the world. Most of the captives are in the European zoos where they are managed by a captive breeding program called Europaeisches Erhaltungszucht Programme (EEP). The last Amur Leopard recorded in Korea was in 1969 when a leopard was captured on the slopes of a hill.

Leopards have powerful limbs useful for climbing trees, along with strong jaws and shoulders. This makes them great hunters where they can attack their prey with the strong claws and then drag it away from other predators into trees. Their preys include antelopes, hares, rodents and domestic animals, if they are living near human settlements.