Indian Leopard (Panthera pardus fusca)

[Luipaard]

From Conservation India Team and Mr. Ullas Karanth:

"This one believes the field guides and the natural history books, which usually dismiss the leopard’s diet as “scrounging on smaller prey.” In actual fact, leopards are powerful predators that routinely kill fairly hefty prey such as spotted deer and sambar fawns.

Even so, Vinay S Kumar’s photograph of a leopard dragging a gaur calf is not a sight you see everyday. The picture, which was taken in Karnataka’s Bandipur Tiger Reserve, shows a male leopard dragging his massive kill to safety. A gaur calf this size probably weighs about 100 kg. A forest dwelling, full-grown male Indian leopard on the other hand, would weigh between 50 – 70 kg.

Leopards are legendary for hauling prey much larger than themselves into trees to keep them from the clutches of other predators. A leopard in Kenya was once observed dragging a young giraffe carcass weighing an estimated 125 kg 5.7 m up a tree. The leopard in this photo however, placed the kill vertically beneath a tree, while it sat a few metres above and guarded it from the safety of its perch."

*This image is copyright of its original author

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