Tooth and Claw: Leopards

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1:08Adam Hart:You're listening to Discovery from the BBC World Service. I'm Adam Hart and this is Tooth and Claw, the series where I explore our complex and challenging relationships with Earth's greatest predators through the people who have spent their lives studying, protecting and at times narrowly escaping them.

1:30Adam Hart:Today's predator is a master of camouflage who stalks and ambushes its prey. So elusive, they're able to exist in places close to people whilst remaining unseen. Incredibly adaptive, this big cat can be found from jungles to deserts, mountains to savannas, across Africa and Asia, and is particularly well known for its tree climbing abilities. It's time to talk about my favourite big cat, the leopard. Joining me are Dr Gareth Mann, who's based in South Africa. He's the Leopard Programme Director for Panthera, the Global Wildcat Conservation Organisation. And Dr Charlotte Searle, a postdoctoral researcher and conservationist based in Tanzania.

2:07Adam Hart:She's associated with the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford. Now Gareth, when I think of what a leopard looks like, the first thing I'm thinking is their spots. How would you describe a leopard's coat? They are incredibly ornate, beautifully patterned big cats. It's a tawny background with these black rosettes that form these very unique patterns. They really blend in well to any kind of dappled light. They have this amazing ability to blend into almost any background, be it bare rock or desert or jungle or savannah, grassland. They just seem to be able to disappear into pretty much anything.

2:53Adam Hart:I guess that gives them a huge advantage as a predator. Absolutely. They are masters of camouflage. Their entire hunting technique is based on being able to get close to their prey without their prey knowing they're there. They do these very short, sharp bursts of charging out of cover to catch their prey. Sometimes they leap out of trees as well, which is pretty spectacular. But yes, they're not ones for chasing down their prey over long distances like cheetahs and wild dogs. They use their camouflage to great effect when hunting. And Charlotte, do all leopards have the same coloration? No, I mean, there is obviously a commonality, Like Gareth says, we have this tawny background with the black rosette spots.

3:36But even that colouration does vary between the different populations of leopards across the world. So we see kind of deeper, richer, golden background colours in some areas. And there's more greyish, lighter background in some of the more kind of arid or mountainous environments. But we also have some slightly special leopards that have a different colouration. So the most well-known is going to be the black leopards, which are also quite often called black panthers, but they are leopards. And these are leopards that have a recessive allele that causes melanism, so they overproduce melanin. And this means that they have a black appearance rather than that kind of golden background.

4:18And this is a mutation that we see kind of across the different subspecies of leopards. The prevalence is around 10 % across its whole global range, but it's much more prevalent in certain populations. So particularly in peninsula Malaysia and in Java, so over in Asia, there's a much higher incidence of black leopards. And basically what we see is it seems to be more common in these dense forested environments where it may actually convey an adaptive advantage to have that darker coloration. Another colouration that we also see much less frequently in leopards is the strawberry leopard or red leopard.

4:55And this is a particular mutation again. These are leopards that have kind of red or brown rosettes. They have pale blue eyes and they have pale skin around their paw pads and around their mouths. And this is really a very rare mutation that's been found multiple times in certain parts of South Africa and in India. And actually, through surveys we've been doing in southern Tanzania, we actually found the first record of one of these leopards outside of those two countries. So this leopard was one of 373 individuals we identified. So again, very rare. This female, she's very pretty, I have to say.

5:36I unfortunately haven't seen her in real life, just on camera truck photos. But this is a mutation that's linked to albinism pathways.

5:45Adam Hart:And we've covered predators on tooth and claw before that have unique coat patterns for individuals. Is that the case in leopards? Absolutely, yes. For the leopards, their spot patterns are unique, just like a fingerprint. And so this is something that is immensely useful for us as researchers because it means we can identify those individuals just from a photograph. And is it also true that each individual leopard has its own unique roar? That is very true, yes. So just recently, actually, we collaborated with a PhD student called Jonathan Grocott on a study using acoustic data. Recorders deployed alongside camera traps and he used these data that he collected to actually work out that we can identify individual leopards from their roars.

6:29Adam Hart:Now, I've had the pleasure and I guess also the fear of hearing a leopard soaring kind of sound very close up. The other thing that stands out when you see a leopard, or at least stands out to me, is its long tail. It reminds me in a way of another big cat we've talked about on Tooth and Claw, the cheetah. And in the last series, we discussed how cheetahs have very long tails for balance and manoeuvrability as they're chasing prey at very high speeds. Leopards obviously don't run as fast as cheetahs. What do they use their long tails for? A lot of the physical characteristics we see in leopards are really adapted for climbing trees.

7:04That's something they're incredibly good at. They make use of this skill both to kind of have a safe place to relax, but also to get away from their competitors. And so this really long tail, it can be up to a metre long, is an incredibly useful extra limb, in effect, to use to balance when they're up in those trees.

7:21Adam Hart:So Gareth, do leopards always take their prey up into trees if other predators aren't around, or do they sometimes just feed on the ground? We think they actually prefer to eat on the ground whenever possible. obviously taking prey up into trees is quite hard work and the prey at leopard skill is often a good proportion of their body weight sometimes even larger than than what the leopard weighs so getting something up into tree requires a lot of physical effort so in general they will try to eat on the ground if they can they'll often drag their prey under a bush or to someplace where there's a little bit of shelter and they'll prefer to consume it there they tend to use trees more when there are other predators around particularly hyenas and we found in some research that we've done in some reserves in south africa that the when hyenas are around leopards are much more likely to take their they prey up into a tree but of course putting the prey up into a tree also advertises that the kill's been made and that can attract other predators.

8:28It can attract lions, which are one of the major threats to leopards. And it can also attract other leopards, which is also often not good news, particularly for female leopards. It's quite common for them to be kicked off their prey by males who will come and just very ungentlemanly like just chase them away from their kill and take it for themselves.

8:50Adam Hart:And we often think of leopards or at least I think most people think of leopards as a kind of African safari species but they've actually got a much bigger range than that don't they Gareth? Yes they have an absolutely incredible range so they are found all the way from the southern tip of Africa from just outside Cape Town where I'm currently sitting all the way to the Russian and Chinese Far East. They go throughout Africa tend not to be found in the the heart of the Sahara Desert but along the whole of West Africa, historically North Africa as well, although we don't have any recent records of leopards in that area.

9:27And then pretty much along the whole of Southern Asia from the Middle East along through India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, and then into China and Russia as well. So yeah, an incredible range that takes them into a wide variety of different habitats that they've been able to adapt to.

9:46Adam Hart:What sort of habitats do you find them in? Pretty much everything. They will tend to, I think, avoid true deserts and very open areas. They do rely on cover to hunt their prey. So they usually are found in places where there's a mixture of trees and grass or trees, mountainous areas they tend to avoid the very high altitudes although one of the consequences of climate change seems to be that there's more overlap between leopards and snow leopards than was previously thought to be the case yeah into really cold environments uh the amur leopard lives in you know ice and snow in the so siberian and russian far east so yeah that's one extreme The other extreme are the desks of the Middle East, where they, again, live in very hot, dry, arid conditions.

10:46So, yeah, it's a real mix.

10:48Adam Hart:And you mentioned that overlap with snow leopards. Are leopards generally the main predator in areas where they're found, or is there a lot of overlap with other species? A lot of overlap with other species. So in Africa, they overlap extensively with lions. And although lions are a big threat to leopards, they don't seem to displace leopards from many areas. Leopards are able to generally cohabit with lions and in an area that's good for lions tends to be good for leopards as well. However, in Asia, they share habitat with tigers as well. And there's some evidence to suggest that tigers and leopards don't really share landscapes very well.

11:30And as tiger numbers increase, leopards get displaced out of those areas and their populations will decline. and they tend to move to the fringes of the protected areas, and that can often result in leopards being involved in quite a bit of conflict with people living around the fringes of protected areas.

11:48Adam Hart:And how do leopards use the landscape? Are they territorial or do they roam around? They are very territorial. They have quite a complex system of tenureship over areas. Males and females will have territories that overlap. female territories we think are generally determined by access to food and suitable sites where they can have a den and raise cubs males obviously also need to eat but want to access as many females as they can as well so a male territory will typically overlap with two to three female territories but males won't overlap that territories won't overlap with those of other males and females typically won't overlap with other females however females do bequeath part of their territory to their daughters so a young female will typically remain within a portion of her mother's range and she will sort of establish a territory there but males get kicked out and they have to roam around for probably about three three to four years until they're big enough to really establish themselves in the territory of their own but they also although they establish these territories they do tend to we've seen in some places that they'll have a territory that they'll hold for three or four years and then they'll sometimes move to a new area and set up a new territory in a completely different area and we're still trying to get to grips with how that works whether it's just to avoid inbreeding or if there's some other driver we aren't certain at this point.

13:36Adam Hart:Charlotte you work in Tanzania what sort of species are leopards hunting there regularly? In the area where I work they really tend to focus on the antelopes in the right kind of size range. So leopards in general, they have a huge amount of dietary plasticity. They can eat all sorts of different things and they will eat all sorts of different things. They'll eat insects, mammals, birds, reptiles. But generally speaking, they prefer antelopes between kind of 10 to 40 kilograms. And so where I am, that's primarily impala, also common duiker, bush bucks. There's quite a lot of warthogs and bush pigs where I work and I think they make quite a good meal for those leopards.

14:15But you know they'll also opportunistically hunt things as they come across them. Things like hares or kind of ground birds like guinea fowl will also be quite a popular snack for a leopard.

14:25Adam Hart:And we've covered a lot of group hunting on Tooth and Claw but leopards are solitary hunters right? Yes leopards are really very solitary creatures. They only really associate with other individuals when they're mating or when it's a mother with her cubs. Otherwise, they really do live a solitary existence. So their hunts, their day-to-day is spent on their own, eking out an existence there. Prep for a busy week with Whole Foods Market. Start your day with fully cooked breakfast sausages from Amy Liu, 365 brand frozen waffles with no bleached flours, and of course Whole Foods Market eggs, which are all cage-free or better.

15:04In the evening, bring home a build-your-own family meal that feeds four for just$35. Choose one entree and two sides. Shop smarter, not harder, at Whole Foods Market. I'm Gwen Washington from Snap Judgment, the storytelling podcast from KQED. Imagine, an iconic piece of paradise overrun by one of those horrific fires in recent memory. Everyone flees, everyone, except one person who decides to fight the flames. all systems down the moment when nature institutions and technology fail at the exact same time a new snap judgment miniseries from kqed wherever you get your podcasts

15:48Adam Hart:you're listening to discovery from the bbc world service i'm adam hart and this is tooth and claw we're talking about a big cat known for being an excellent tree climber and an elusive ambush predator. It's the leopard. And joining us are leopard conservationist Dr. Gareth Mann and Dr. Charlotte Searle. Gareth, you're involved with the Arabian Leopard Initiative. Now, I believe there are populations of Arabian leopards in Oman and Yemen, but not Saudi Arabia. Is that right? Yes, that's right, Adam. They were historically found around the fringes of the Arabian Peninsula, extending from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, down into Saudi Arabia, through Yemen and Oman into the UAE, in fact.

16:31But they've lost 98, 99 % of the historical range. And we know that there's at least one reasonably healthy population in Oman. we think there are a fair few left in Yemen that we haven't found any in Saudi Arabia as yet.

16:52Adam Hart:And it's the idea of the project to reintroduce leopards into Saudi. Around 2023 the focus of the project shifted towards the reintroduction of captive bred leopards into nature reserves in northern Saudi Arabia and so there's two prongs to the project at the moment. The first is building up the captive population. Fortunately, there was already a captive population in Saudi Arabia, and it's about trying to increase those numbers because they are currently around just over 30 individuals, and we would need a lot more to be able to have a successful reintroduction program. And then the other side of the project is preparing the site so that the leopards have a good chance of survival when they are actually released into the landscape.

17:42Adam Hart:So you wouldn't be using any of the wild leopards in Oman or Yemen for any of the reintroduction? In an ideal world, we would, because the wild leopards would almost certainly have a much better chance of survival. But the Omani population isn't big enough for us to sustainably remove leopards from that population. There'd be a high risk of us having a detrimental impact on that population. And unfortunately, the political situation in Yemen makes it extremely difficult to get leopards from that population. And again, we know almost nothing about the status of those populations. And there've also been successful reintroductions of kaffta-bred leopards around Sochi in the Russian Caucasus Mountains.

18:30So there are examples that we can build from, but it does remain a very challenging and very ambitious project.

18:38Adam Hart:And Arabian leopards are a different subspecies from the African leopard that people are perhaps more familiar with. How do the different subspecies of leopard across their range differ? There's quite a remarkable variation. So the Arabian leopards are a lot smaller than the African leopards typically are. Their coloration is slightly different. We spoke earlier about the tawny fur that leopards have. In Arabian leopards, it's much paler. It's almost a white-colored background with the black spots. But the main difference is the size. They only reach about 30 to 40 kilograms in the males and sort of 25 kilograms or so for the female leopards, which is about half the size of an African savannah leopard.

19:27but Persian leopards which are found relatively close by in the majority of their of their range forces in Iran but they also extend into Turkey and southern Russia and Georgia are the largest of the subspecies and and get really big 80 to 90 kilograms sometimes I think a bit larger than that it's yeah it's quite bizarre having these such a big dimorphism in these two subspecies found right next to each other.

19:54Adam Hart:Do we understand why these different subspecies have such large size differences? We think that it's linked to the prey availability and the type of prey and just how much of it is around. So the Arabian leopard lives in these arid mountains. Prey is very scarce. They have to probably cover very large distances. And this is one of the other differences between leopards in different areas is the size of the territories that they'll hold so whereas a savannah leopard might hold a territory of 10 to 20 square kilometers in a high productivity system your arabian leopard is likely to have a territory of a couple of hundreds maybe even 500 to a thousand square kilometers they cover really large distances and their prey is much smaller so they don't need to be as large and as powerful to catch it, but also it reduces their energetic requirements.

20:57They don't need to eat as much if they're smaller. They are built more as endurance athletes rather than sprinters in comparison to the savannah leopards.

21:08Adam Hart:And Charlotte, what sort of relationship do people have with leopards and vice versa? Are they generally avoiding us or are they in fact a threat? Certainly leopards are very good at avoiding people when they want to. I think it's quite a common refrain if you go on safari that you'll only see a leopard that wants to be seen. But generally their relationship with people can be quite complex. As with any carnivore, they do have a penchant for eating livestock when they coincide with those animals. And obviously, the more we see wild habitats becoming fragmented and degraded, the more we see those interactions between leopards and people and specifically with their livestock.

21:44So they will generally avoid people but when those opportunities arise to get some food in places where they may not have much other prey available they will seize those opportunities and prey on things like sheep and goats. Obviously on the other side though they can also be very curious creatures particularly with young males this is a more common thing that we might see and actually one of my most memorable leopard sightings was in Sulu Game Reserve in southern Tanzania back in 2021 and we were out doing camera trap surveys. We were kind of in the middle of setting up a grid and we were just driving past on our way to where we were next, putting up a camera.

22:20And we spotted a leopard just sitting next to a waterhole, which is not, you know, in my experience, that's not normally how I tend to see them just out in the open, having a nice sit. So we, you know, drove the car to get closer and expected this leopard to do the kind of normal thing that we tend to see in these areas of being a bit intrigued, but generally a bit skittish and moving off. But instead what happened was this young male basically proceeded to come over to us. And we, you know, we sat there with the car and he just strode over quite confidently, lay on his back, rolled around, all the while kind of half watching us, kind of showing off it felt like.

22:57And even when it came to the time, you know, we spent like an hour with this guy. By the time we kind of admitted to ourselves that we had to actually move on and get on with our work, every time we started the car and tried to move off, he would just follow us and get a little bit closer each time. So it was one of the hardest things to try and actually make ourselves leave this guy who is just a lovely, lovely sighting. And I think what's interesting is this leopard is one who lives in an area where he really won't be seeing cars that much. Because this is a hunting area, trophy hunting area.

23:26There's really not that many vehicles around, very, very few. And so I think he was just so curious, and particularly being a young male, they tend to be more bold, that he just couldn't kind of control his curiosity and had to come over and see us.