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"Strawberry" Leopard Discovered—A First
By Christine Dell'Amore, National Geographic News
PUBLISHED APRIL 14, 2012
Rare animal likely has genetic condition that changes fur pigment.
The pink-hued leopard wanders South Africa's Madikwe Game Reserve. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY DEON DE VILLIERS
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*This image is copyright of its original author
A leopard can't change its spots, but apparently it can change its color.
African leopards normally have tawny coats with black spots. But a male leopard with a strawberry-colored coat has been spotted in South Africa's Madikwe Game Reserve (map), conservationists announced this week.
Tourists in the reserve had occasionally seen the unusual animal. But it wasn't until recently that photographer and safari guide Deon De Villiers sent a photograph to experts at Panthera, a U.S.-based wild cat-conservation group, to ask them about the leopard's odd coloration.
Panthera President Luke Hunter suspects the pale leopard has erythrism, a little-understood genetic condition that's thought to cause either an overproduction of red pigments or an underproduction of dark pigments.
"It's really rare—I don't know of another credible example in leopards," said Hunter, whose group collaborates with National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)
Hunter added, "it's surprising that [a photo of the leopard] didn't come out sooner, because he's relatively used to vehicles."
Strawberry Leopard Still Successful
Erythrism is very unusual in carnivores, and the condition appears most often in raccoons, Eurasian badgers, and coyotes, Hunter noted.
"There are some spotted leopard skins and melanistic specimens—black panthers—in museums with red undertones, but fading probably contributes to that," he said.
Melanism is an unusual development of black or nearly black color in an animal's skin, fur, or plumage. (See video: "Mutant All-Black Penguin Found.")
The strawberry leopard seems healthy and likely suffers no ill consequences from his pinkish hue, Hunter said: "He's obviously a successful animal."
For instance, the leopard's coat still offers him some camouflage—leopards rely on their spotted fur to sneak up on prey and ambush them from as close as 13 feet (4 meters) away. (See big-cat pictures.)
More worrisome for the strawberry leopard are the game farms that surround the Madikwe reserve, Hunter said.
If the animal were to leave the reserve, he'd lose the strict protection offered by Madikwe and become fair game for legal trophy hunting, Hunter said.
"It's the fate of a lot of leopards."
PIC: Rare sightings of 'strawberry' leopards in north of SA
2016-07-05 10:30
Cape Town - Researchers have found evidence of seven "strawberry leopards" in the north of South Africa in what is one of very few documented cases of these ultra-rare rare big cats outside India.
The result of an extraordinary genetic twist, strawberry or erythristic leopards are slightly paler than other leopards. Their black spots are reddish brown.
Some say these are the original "pink panthers", although Dr Mark Fellowes of the University of Reading UK, one of three authors of a recently-published paper on South Africa's strawberry leopards, isn't a fan of the nickname.
He told News24, "They're strawberry in the sense of someone being strawberry blonde, that sort of reddish blonde hair colour. They look 'washed out' to me."
Five of the leopards have been seen since 2012. Two were found in a wilderness reserve in Mpumalanga that has been the site of an intensive three-year study conducted by researchers from Reading with the support of Ingwe Leopard Research.
With the help of rangers, conservationists and social media, researchers were able to document evidence of five other erythristic leopards.
These leopards were found in Mpumalanga and North West province. Two were victims of road accidents, while one was shot sometime during the last 20 years. Its skin was given to a farmer.
Before this study, the main records of strawberry leopards were from India, where a scientific paper published in 1993 said five leopards "with light brown spots" had been shot between 1905 and 1965.
Fellowes says that so little was known about the presence of strawberry leopards in South Africa that the research team was taken by surprise when one showed up in a camera trap.
He said, "To be honest, until we recorded the individual on the camera trap we weren't aware of this colour morph. We did some digging which resulted in us finding some records in the press.
(Image: Ingwe Leopard Research)
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*This image is copyright of its original author
We were able to pull these together with our own records and a survey of knowledgeable people across South Africa."
One of the strawberry leopards was born during the study and seen by doctoral researcher Tara Pirie, Fellowes confirmed. The cub's mother was not a strawberry leopard. These leopards are not albinos, Fellowes stresses. "It's a different mutation."
The colouring of leopards is already known to vary depending on geographical location. Leopards from densely-forested areas are darker and their spots are much closer together.
Leopards living in arid regions tend to be paler with their spots further apart, likely for camouflage purposes. But that doesn't explain why the seven erythristic leopards found in this study got their spots, since Mpumalanga isn't an exceptionally arid place.
Fellowes and his colleagues suspect the presence of these ultra-rare felines in the region may be to do with the pressures upon leopard populations and the in-breeding that results from it. While leopard hunting isn't legally allowed, some leopards are killed by farmers. Others are occasionally killed in road accidents.
"In normal large populations, rare genotypes don't show themselves," Fellowes says. "But when populations become fragmented then you end up with more related individuals mating with each other so rare genes can become expressed."
