Persian Leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor)

[Styx38]

(05-12-2019, 04:12 AM)Pckts Wrote: 100% Leopards kills adult Sambar, so that's false. 


2ndly, not a single study states any leopard species rarely kills adults and African Leopards kill far more and larger prey than any species of Leopard in comparison.
Indian leopards have much less small to mid sized prey available comparitively so of course they won't make as many large kills, also why they're usually smaller than their African cousins.

Now in regards to Jaguars, you're speaking on different species, if being the apex predator dictated size than all Jaguars would be pantanal sized. But that's not the case, the pantanal on top of being a completely unique eco system, offers many prey items that are extremely large. I.e. Capybara, Caiman, Pecaray, Giant Ant eater, Marsh Deer, Otter, etc.

Sri Lankan leopards are apex predators yet their size isn't larger than African Leopards or even Indians based off measurements and weights, Persian leopards are apex predators with high altitude in their favor yet they haven't produced a Leopard over 100kg.
You can speculate all you want, the facts are the same. Male Leopards are 50-80kg, some outliers get close to that 100kg mark. These weights have occured in Africa, India or Iran, not one place has produced some freak individuals that dwarf all other sub species.

1 and 2)

Quote:Likewise, small sized preys made up more of the biomass eaten by leopards than medium sized prey and considerably more than large prey, which leopard appear to avoid attacking (Table 3).  


There may be two reasons for the observed difference in preferred size of prey between tiger and leopard. One is that for a large predator, like tiger, it may be almost equally easy to overpower and capture large pry, (e.g., adult gaur or sambar), as a smaller one (Sunquist 1981), while much smaller leopard may find difficulties in killing large prey. Consequently, leopard might have to resort to medium or smaller prey, while tiger may prefer large food items, which provide it by more meat. The other option is that tiger may prefer less disturbed central areas of the park, while leopard is more tolerant to disturbances (Wang and McDonald 2009b). Assuming that both predators eat what is available in their preferred habitat, there may be a larger proportion of large-sized prey in tiger’s diet, because these are more frequently encountered in the central parts of the park (DNPWC 2009), while leopard may be more likely to kill smaller-sized animals, occurring at the periphery of the park, like goats. Based on our data, it is not possible to test, which of these options is true—maybe both.  

It is difficult for a leopard to kill large animals like cattle and buffalo. Hence, goats are the easy prey for leopards and they occurred more in leopards’ 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10531-012-0298-y

or Interactions between Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris) and leopard (Panthera pardus): implications for their conservation by Bhattarai and Kindelmann

Quote:Similarly, sambar deer are larger and more aggressive than chital deer, and this could be a reason for their lower occurrence in our scat samples.

Tiger decline caused by the reduction of large ungulate prey: evidence from a study of leopard diets in southern India (Ramakrishnan et. al)




Anyway, I found this interesting set of info:

Quote:The contribution of rodent in leopard’s diet was 44.2% in 1990, when the study area was largely occupied by tigers (Sankar & Johnsingh 2002), but after the local extermination of tiger from the study area (2007-08), Mondal et al. (2011) found no contribution of rodent in leopard’s diet. Later, after the re-introduction of tiger in the study area (in 2009), the contribution of rodent in leopard’s diet raised to 5.4% (Table III). In 1990, chital contributed maximum in tiger diet (57.2%) followed by sambar (18.1%) and in leopard diet, rodent contributed maximum (44.2%) followed by chital (20.2%), sambar (19.4%) and nilgai (7%). But after the local extermination of tiger from the study area, the diet of leopard changed significantly. The contribution of sambar and nilgai in leopard’s diet increased to 40.3% and 11.5% respectively in 2007-08, when there was no tiger in the study area (Mondal et al. 2011) (Table III). It was evident that, leopard shifted their diet from lesser prey species. to large ungulates after tiger extermination from Sariska (Sankar et al. 2009; Mondal et al. 2011)

This was one of the few areas where Leopards actually made adult Sambar kills (both stags and hinds):

*This image is copyright of its original author

Prey selection, food habits and dietary overlap between leopard Panthera pardus (Mammalia: Carnivora) and re-introduced tiger Panthera tigris (Mammalia: Carnivora) in a semi-arid forest of Sariska Tiger Reserve, Western India  (Mondal et. al)


It is pretty obvious Leopards make big kills when a larger carnivore is absent. It's just that there was a misconception with the previous two studies that leopards may not be able to take down adult sambar, or any other large ungulate.

Might explain why the majority of documentaries in African savannas show Leopards mainly focusing on juveniles/subadults, impalas, gazelles, duikers,  steenbok and even hares while lions take down adult zebra, wildebeest and buffalo.

At least Rob the Ranger upgraded it with an occasional Kudu cow.  

*This image is copyright of its original author

 


3) Haha, most of the Jaguar prey you listed is fairly small to mid-sized except for the Marsh deer. Anyway, there is a correlation with decent sized prey and top predator position, like Persian/Sri Lankan/Central African Leopard (top predators with decent sized prey) vs. Arabian Leopard (top predators with small prey).



4) "Persian leopards are apex predators with high altitude in their favor yet they haven't produced a Leopard over 100kg."

Nice contradiction:

(12-22-2015, 12:47 AM)Pckts Wrote: Even though I am skeptical of it, it was confirmed by the vet.
The largest verified leopard weight was the 115kg mark set by a persian leopard missing one paw.

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