Leopard Predation Thread

[Styx38]

@Lycaon @Luipaard 


It is interesting to Leopards cache prey on trees in environments outside of Africa.

The only Leopard subspecies that I have not seen hoist prey up a tree is the Persian Leopard.

Anyway, here is a bit on Persian Leopard kill sites.

They kill Urial Rams, Bezoar Goats and Wild Boar. There also other animals, like livestock, domestic dogs, foxes, porcupines and etc.

"Young leopards killed both young and adult prey equally (50.0% adult versus 50.0% young), whereas adult leopards killed a preponderance of adult prey (88.1% adult versus 11.9% young; Fisher’s exact test, P = 0.003). Adult male urials and bezoar goats killed by the leopards were on average 7.1 ± 0.4 and 6.9 ± 0.3 years old. Four of 6 wild pig remains were young adults (< 2 years)."


Farhadinia, M. S., Johnson, P. J., Hunter, L. T., & Macdonald, D. W. (2018). Persian leopard predation patterns and kill rates in the Iran–Turkmenistan borderland. Journal of Mammalogy, 99(3), 713-723.




While four of the Wild Pigs were sub-adults, two were confirmed to be adults.

This was confirmed by Dr. Farhadina himself. 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Speaking of caching kills, here are the areas where Persian Leopards store their prey.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Fig. 1 Different types of kill hoarding, known as caching behaviour, in Persian leopards in Tandoureh National Park and surrounding areas along the Iran Turkmenistan borderland. a an urial ram under a tree, b an urial ram in dense vegetation, c a wild pig inside a rocky hollow, d a bezoar goat among cliffs in high elevations, e & f urial rams under cliffs at the end of valleys, g left image shows the position of a dog, which is zoomed in the right image, next to communal lands in the far background, and h a dog concealed among cliffs (Photos by M. Farhadinia, K. Hobeali, P. Behnoud, P. Moghadas and S. Firouzi)


source: Farhadinia, M. S., Michelot, T., Johnson, P. J., Hunter, L. T., & Macdonald, D. W. (2020). Understanding decision making in a food-caching predator using hidden Markov models. Movement ecology, 8(1), 9.


It is also interesting to note is that Luke Hunter, who has worked with African Leopards, was also involved in this project. Reply