The
Garden Route and South
Africa offers you the Big 5. Remember to
let us know if there are certain safaris
you would like to do during our Garden
Route Tours and we will do our best to
include it.
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Africa, Garden Route Tours and Safaris, Game Drives,
Leopard
The
leopard is a member of the Felidae family and the
smallest of the four "big cats", the other
three are the tiger, lion and jaguar. Once distributed
across southern Asia and Africa, from Korea to South
Africa, the leopard's range of distribution has
decreased radically over time due to hunting and
loss of habitat, and the leopard now chiefly occurs
in sub-Saharan Africa. There are fragmented populations
in India, Indochina, Malaysia, and China. Due to
the loss of range and continual declines in population,
the cat has been downgraded to "Near Threatened"
species; its numbers are greater than that of the
other Panthera species, all of which face more acute
conservation concerns.
The
leopard has relatively short legs and a long body,
with a large skull. Physically, it most closely
resembles the jaguar, although it is usually smaller
and of slighter build. Its fur is marked with rosettes
which lack internal spots, unlike those of the jaguar.
Leopards that are melanistic, either completely
black or very dark in coloration, are one of the
big cats known colloquially as black panthers.
The
species' success in the wild owes in part to its
opportunistic hunting behaviour, its adaptability
to a variety of habitats and its ability to move
at up to approximately 60 kilometres (37 miles)
an hour. The leopard consumes virtually any animal
it can hunt down and catch. Its preferred habitat
ranges from rainforest to desert terrains. Its ecological
role and status resembles that of the similarly-sized
cougar in the Americas.
Like
the rest of the feline family, the Panthera genus
has been subject to much alteration and debate and
the exact relations between the four species (as
well as the clouded leopard and snow leopard) have
not been effectively resolved. DNA evidence shows
that the lion, tiger, leopard, jaguar, snow leopard,
and clouded leopard share a common ancestor nearly
11 million years ago (Ma)—the basal divergence
amongst the Felidae family. The fossil record points
to the emergence of Panthera just two to 3.8 million
years ago.
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