Photo by Mark Homann
Post and images by Mark Homann, professional safari guide
Over the past 18 years, I have not met a single guest who is not excited about the chance to view a leopard. They are at times frustratingly hard to find while, at other times, they are frustratingly easy to find, you always seem to see them when you least expect to.
Whenever my guests ask me if we’ll see a leopard, my response is always this: if the leopard wants you to see him then you will indeed see one. An old tracker once told me that if you dream about seeing a leopard then you will not see one as they will know that you are coming. I have searched for days with guests looking for a sighting. One client of mine has been on countless safaris and has never seen a single leopard. Then, on one of the safaris I was guiding this past June we had 10 sightings in 12 days.
Photo by Mark Homann
One of the surprising things about this animal that is so hard to see is how successful they are. Their ability to adapt to changing environments (often at the hand of man), and to utilize such a wide range of prey species, allows them to turn up in the most unlikely of places. There are stories of leopard living on the outskirts of large urban areas like Harare (Zimbabwe’s capital city of over 2 million people). I have seen kudu successfully hunting female kudu (over 200 pounds) and small mammals such as the rock hyrax (5 to 10 pounds).
My first experience with this secretive cat was as a young child driving home at night along the dirt road to my family’s farm. As we rounded a corner, a female leopard and her two cubs lit up in the car’s headlights. They stopped for a moment allowing us to take in their magnificence before melting into the long grass that grew on the road’s edge. Little did we know that this was my first of many chance encounters and the beginning of many fruitless searches.
Photo by Mark Homann
The leopard is a large powerful cat (males up to 200 pounds and females up to 130 pounds) that lives everywhere from the deserts to the rain forests of Africa and parts of Asia. They move like liquid, achieving speeds of over 30 miles an hour over very short distances. Their camouflage is without question amazing—I have seen them stand up 10 feet away having been lying in a clump of grass without ever knowing. They are so powerful that they can drag an impala up into the high branches of a tree, keeping the kill safe from lion and hyena.
Leopards live in territories that they defend from members of the same sex, the size of these vary depending on the availability of food. A male’s territory can encompass a number of females; he will mate with them, leaving them to fill the role as parent. Leopard has a gestation of 90 to 105 days, with an average of 2 to 4 cubs born. They are blind and helpless at birth with an infant mortality rate of as much as 50%. They can become independent as early as one year in age but are more likely to stay in the area of their mother until they are about 18 to 24 months old.
Their role in ecology is of vital importance—there is an African fable that tells a story of a village that goes against the advice of their elders and kills a leopard that ate a calf. Soon the baboon population becomes so large and emboldened that they destroy the village’s crops and everyone starves.
I hope that if you are ever on safari the African leopard decides to allow you the privilege of seeing him. But whether you do see a leopard or not, I can guarantee that the leopard will see you.
Photo by Mark Homann
Photo by Mark Homann
Share this post with your friends on Twitter.
