Look Who it Was Random video

Leopard Steps on Something Sharp, Hurts Paw in The Living Desert

3,186 views · Published 27 November 2012 · 3:11 · Indexed 2 October 2026

Channel: Melvin Wei · 2012 · Pets & Animals

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Leopards, or Panthera pardus, are found in Africa, the Middle East, and all along the south of Asia. Leopards are noctural, hunting at night and early morning; they spend their days sleeping and lounging around in trees or ledges to avoid other predators and competition for their carcasses. Males weigh 35-70 kilograms. Females are smaller. Black leopards are simply a color variation, another phenotype, not another species.

Leopards are very well adapted for survival compared to other big cats. Leopards will eat insects such as beetles, small mammals and birds, and of course, large game such as antelope. They ambush their prey, often from tree branches above, and will rarely chase prey more than 6 meters, avoiding the massive energy losses and chances for injury associated with chasing fast prey. Leopards are strong cats that can kill herbivores as large as themselves and drag the kills into trees, where they will dine upon the carcass for up to 5 days. They employ this strategy to avoid having their kills usurped by other top predators such as lions and hyenas; only the cheetah, which has a weak and delicate build, will yield its carcass to a leopard.

Adult leopards live solitary lives unless they are seeking mates. Females start reproducing at the age of 3, giving birth to 2-4 cubs after a gestation period of 90-100 days. The mother leaves the cubs in their concealed dens to go hunt. The cubs are relatively helpless for a few months, so they stay with their mothers for over one year, then share her hunting range until they are over two years old. Good parental care seems to be a major reason leopards are so successful at surviving in the wild, in addition to their willingness to eat whatever prey is available.

Despite the leopards' success among the big cats, the ones living in the extreme climates of the Arabian deserts and the snowy mountains of Russia and China are critically endangered, while the ones in Africa are doing well enough on their own.

The leopard in this exhibit steps on something sharp one minute into the video, causing it to recoil its foot and lick its paw. This shows that leopards and other big cats are vulnerable to the same dangers human hikers are exposed to on a regular basis, except they have less protection from sharp debris, snakes, and parasites than we do. The reality of the situation on the ground is a lot less magical than what the average person would assume, which is probably something along the lines of big cats sneaking silently throughout the wild without ever making noise or getting hurt.

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