Leopard

About this species

Size

Head and body 92–183cm; tail 66–102cm; shoulder 57–70cm

Weight

Males about 31–72kg, females about 21–43kg

Habitat

Almost every forest type, scrub, rocky hills, plantations and farmland near villages

Litter size

1–4 cubs (Cat Specialist Group)

Gestation

90–105 days (Cat Specialist Group)

The leopard is a slender, muscular cat with fairly short legs, a broad head and a long tail that is white underneath and at the tip. The coat ranges from pale yellow to deep golden and is covered in black rosettes that fade to single spots on the white belly and lower legs. Animals from dry country tend to be paler than those from forest and hills. All-black leopards, the black panthers, owe their colour to a recessive gene. Males are clearly larger and heavier than females (Wikipedia, general species account).

Across its range the leopard is solitary and territorial, with adults meeting mainly to mate. It is active mostly from dusk to dawn and spends the day in thickets, among rocks or stretched along a branch; it climbs well and comes down trees head first. A leopard may cover 25 km in a night. Its best-known call is a rasping, sawing roar, and cubs call their mother with soft mews (Wikipedia, general species account).

India's 2022 leopard survey covered forest habitat in 20 states and estimated 13,874 leopards, up 8% from 12,852 in 2018 (MoEFCC 2024, Status of Leopards in India 2022, as summarised by Drishti IAS). Madhya Pradesh had the most, at 3,907, followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Central India and the Eastern Ghats hold the largest and growing population, helped by tiger protection, while the Shivalik hills and Gangetic plains declined, and numbers fell in Odisha and Uttarakhand. Leopard densities were higher inside tiger reserves than outside protected areas.

Description: Wildlife of India guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)