Rainforest Leopards

[Luipaard]

A camera trap from Philipp Henschel:

Male leopard in Plateaux Batéké NP in Gabon – the most beautiful cat species filmed in one of the most beautiful landscapes in Africa! Him having the courage to move around in broad daylight in the open savannah is thanks to the protection efforts by Gabon’s national park agency ANPN. Before almost all wildlife in the park was largely nocturnal due to intense poaching, as animals felt safer to move around in the cover of dark.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Also, I finally managed to get in touch with him.  I asked his opinion about their suggested size, something I was wondering for quite a while:

Quote:Yes, it was indeed one of the first I recorded in Gabon, and no worries at all. This just happens a lot. Back on the subject, we have no live weights of leopards in Gabon, as we so far never collared any, and thus we have close to no knowledge on the actual size of the cats. We have 3 skulls of sub-adult males now (2 killed by poachers and one found dead), and the skulls are fairly large. We have yet to take proper craniometric measurements. We also have a genetic study underway, and there seems to be a clear distinction, genetically, from East and Southern African leopards. Ecologically, their are certainly the apex predator in our closed forest systems here, as you state, and commonly used prey species are large. Males predominantly killed red river hogs in my dense forest sites, while in forest-savanna mosaics like northern Lope young forest buffalo become an important prey item seasonally. Gorilla and chimp are also regularly taken at all sites. It certainly makes sense for them to become big, heavy ambush predators in this environment...

We'll have to wait a little bit longer to be 100% sure, but it looks like these leopards are indeed bigger and more robust. Too bad we don't have any weight measurements! Reply