ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - D - THE LEOPARD (Panthera pardus)

[BorneanTiger]

(12-23-2019, 10:26 AM)Styx38 Wrote: No mentions of the rare Somalian Leopard?


Anyway, Somalian Leopard kills man.

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"A man has been killed and seven people have been injured in an attack by a Leopard"

http://www.allgalgaduud.net/2017/10/05/leopard-kills-1-injures-7-people-in-somalia/



The Somalian Leopard was considered as a man eater during the British Somaliland (now part of Northern Somalia) :

Quote: Wrote:In 1889 there was a leopard, said to be a panther, which had haunted the Mirso ledge of the Golis range for some years, and was supposed to have killed over a hundred people. It was in the habit of lying in wait at a corner of a very dark, rough jungle path, where huge rocks overlooked the track; and the Somalis used to show a boulder, some 6 feet high, a yard from the path, in the flat top of which was a depression shaped like a panther's body, from which the beast was said to spring upon travellers.

 account of H.G.C. Swayne in Great and Small Game of Africa by Henry Bryden 



Somalian Leopards are quite small.

Here are their approximate weights:

Females: 23-27 kg; Males: 34-40 kg

source: Big Cats by Tom Brakefield



Leopards in Somalia were bold and powerful enough to hunt men in villages despite being smaller than their other African counterparts.

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List of Mammals from Somali-land Obtained by the Museum's East African Expedition by Daniel Giraud Elliot

Alfred Edward Pease, in The Book of the Lion, went into detail about African panthers, including in Somaliland. He searched for one that had claimed "many victims among the natives near the Jerato Pass in the Golis Mountains," also saying that this panther had "haunted the Gen Libah for some years," that whereas Somalis used the name "Shabel" for the common leopard, they used the name "Orghobie" for the panther, and that he was stalked by a leopard in the Gadabursi Mountains: https://archive.org/stream/bookoflion191...ch/panther

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The Jerato (Gellato Pass) in the Golis Mountains of northern Somalia, credit: The Field Museum Library

*This image is copyright of its original author

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