Felids Interactions - Interspecific Conflicts

[Shadow]

(01-24-2019, 04:25 PM)Spalea Wrote: @Shadow :

About #582: We can never know what happens in the animals' mind. If the leopard is cornered by 5 lionesses, it would react very aggressively because it's a life or death question. And the lionesses surely not as motivated would be badly surprised. Sometimes lions seem to be debonair, nonchalant, in their acts and against a raging leopard it isn't the good attitude.

The leopard in this case wouldn't insist. It can take advantage of the surprise that its aggressiv reaction provoked and flee away as quickly as possible. But IMO, it isn't going to continue fighting against 5 lionnesses at the same time.

Otherwise I said that anything can happen. A lioness or a tigress climbing upto a tree by chasing a leopard can have a bad fall. But it isn't the leopard which would have killed them.

We aren't witness, we don't know what happened exactly, some facts will remain unknown. We are only hypothesizing !

Exactly, we can never know what happens in animals mind, so anything is possible in rare occasion even though usually it would go in certain "pattern" :) And in that case with 5 lions, of course that leopard wants to flee, but as you and I can see, when it has no opportunity it fights with all what it has, there is no option as long as lions are "too close", turning back in that situation would be lethal to leopard, it needs some space to flee, it for sure wants to survive, not die.

And yes, there are open questions about many cases, this is one of them. So we can agree about some things and then we can have some things where we slightly disagree. But I think, that in big picture our opinion is quite same. I am not saying, that leopards would kill tigers all the time, in known cases it happens to be tiger killing a leopard. I only say how I see and think and I don´t think, that it would be impossible for a leopard to kill a tiger or a lion in some occasions, even if it is happening all the time on ground level. Which doesn´t mean, that I would believe, that it would happen often :) I think, that in rare occasions it can happen. A little bit like with wild boar and tiger. When tiger kill and eat wild boar, no-one cares, it happens so often. But when wild boar kills a tiger, it is headlines :) Reply