Being surrounded by amazing cats and learning more about them every day, I thought it might be a good idea to write a few blog posts about species. In addition to some facts about their habitat, behavior or appearance I am also going to add photos that I have taken here at Big Cat Rescue.

Leopards are my favorite species of the big cats, so I am going to start there 🙂

The leopard is the smallest member of the four great cats (Tiger, Lion, Jaguar and Leopard). The distinctions of greater and lesser cats are that greater cats can roar and they purr only when exhaling. Lesser cats can’t roar, and they purr when exhaling and inhaling. In addition, greater cats use their feces to mark their territory while lesser cats often bury their feces. Lesser cats have elliptical pupils and mostly hunt at night, while the pupils of a greater cat are round and they hunt both during the day and at night.

A leopard can adapt to almost any habitat and is the only large predator in rain forests. Its distribution ranges from Africa to Asia, but excludes large deserts.
The leopards markings, called rosettes, are an excellent way of camouflage in the rain forest. The pattern created by sunlight and shadows from leaves makes them easily blend in with their environments, and I have seen this here at Big Cat Rescue many times. The marking of every leopard is as individual to them as our fingerprints are to us, and it’s visible in their skin just like a tattoo.

Here are a few additional facts about Leopards:

• Runs just under 40 miles per hour
• Can leap 20 feet horizontally and 10 feet vertically
• Swims and climbs trees
• Has an extremely flexible diet of 30 different species, ranging from beetles up to antelopes twice its weight
• A leopards offspring is called “cub” with a litter between 1 to 3 cubs
• Black leopards and golden leopards could come from the same litter
• They can live over 20 years in captivity (yay, Sabre!) and about 10 to 11 years in the wild
• Leopards are solitary by nature