Persian Leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor)

[LeoMan]

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

I want to share these 2 pictures i have taken myself of an adult male Persian Leopard, the specimen is at least 7-8 years old but he can also be much older. Some interesting things i can share about the leopard:

1° Colour

This specific leopard resembles much more the pale-white fur of Snow Leopards than the usual coating of African-Indian populations. Also the underside fur on the throat, chest, belly, tail is much longer than African-Indian Leopards and and gives some Amur Leopard winter coat "vibes".
Also the tail looks very fluffly and girthy, contributing to the general impression of an animal living in colder climates.
(This is not due to his location in captivity, Rome, which is much hotter than his original habitat in North Iran)

2° Condition

Despite being an elderly animal living in captivity i found the Leopard in really good form. The animal seemed very muscular for a captive specimen, surely not obese. I can't really judge if the animal carried some extra weight (let's say a bit overweight) but i think that would be still acceptable and normal for an animal his age who lived in captivity all his life.

3° Size

I was really astonished when i saw the leopard, i couldn't really believe my eyes for at least a minute. In complete honesty i will say that this is the only leopard i have seen in real life. But i have seen countless images, videos, articles, documentaries about all leopard subspecies and over the years i trained myself to make estimates and comparisons with body proportions and size of all kind of animals. And i can safely say i would not have believed a leopard could be that big.
Certainly the longer-than-average fur contributes to the overall impression of big size, but there is much much more than that.

4° My guess


Maybe i am about to make a big claim, i m aware of that, but i will say Leopards don't really get much bigger than this specimen.
I didn't have the opportunity to ask the staff of the park informations about the leopard, but i have been lucky to observe him at a very close distance for quite some time.
Shoulder height i would say he is in the range 65-70cm, and i am leaning more towards 70.
Body lenght is very impressive, the animal is insanely long. I would say in the range 140-150 cm, actually 145 cm could be a fair guess.
Overall lenght i can't really say because the fluffy tail is tricky to visualize. Maybe its just too simple approach but if the tail is half the lenght of the head-boady (72,5-75cm) with get an overall lenght of 220cm, which seems reasonable to me.

In the weight department i will start saying the animal is quite muscular and robust, the exact opposite of many lean and slim leopards all over the world. If we take his body dimensions together with his stocky appearance, the leopard probably weights at least 70 kg and maybe even 75-80kg.

5° Conclusion


The experience watching the leopard made me think about the problem animal enthusiasts face when they re looking for the biggest specimens of certain animal species. Sometimes scientific research can give a good answer to such question but many times this is not the case and animal enthusiasts must rely on all kind of sources, news and articles from social medias, private organizations, hunting reports written in hunting books and many other different sources. 
And many times animal enthusiasts are willing to accept the latest claims about record specimens because they would like their favourite animals to be as large and powerful as possible and i can understand this feeling and i surely dont blame anyone.
But the reality is in todays world where large predators are few and far between, their numbers just a mere shadow of the past, it s very rare almost impossible to find these outliers, record specimens.
When it comes to leopard subspecies, from the data available, large adult males of the largest populations (in terms of size, not numbers of individuals) are 60 kg animals.

When i saw the Leopard i really felt to be in front of a very large and rare specimen. One of the outliers. And when i tried to compare it with the available data i discovered that yes, the leopard was a big one, but nothing out of the limits known to scientific research. And at the same time i really felt that i ve never seen a bigger leopard in thousands of online material. So i concluded that there is a maximum size leopards  can reach and the maximum size is more or less what we already know from the actual data.

I don't want to say that every 90-100 kg leopard ever reported is fake information and shouldn't be trusted, but i want to say such a leopard, if really exists, must be regarded as an exceptional outlier and probably in race for the biggest leopard actually alive spot.

So when we think about a really large male leopard, the biggest specimens from the largest population, we are thinking about an animal like the one in the pictures above, a 70-80kg freak of a leopard. Reply