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The leopard (Panthera pardus) is one of the five extant cat species in the genus Panthera.It has a pale yellowish to dark golden fur with dark spots grouped in rosettes.Its body is slender and muscular reaching a length of 92–183 cm (36–72 in) with a 66–102 cm (26–40 in) long tail and a shoulder height of 60–70 cm (24–28 in).
The African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus) is the nominate subspecies of the leopard, native to many countries in Africa. It is widely distributed in most of sub-Saharan Africa , but the historical range has been fragmented in the course of habitat conversion .
Panthera pardus tulliana, also called Persian leopard, Anatolian leopard, and Caucasian leopard in different parts of its range, is a leopard subspecies that was first described in 1856 based on a zoological specimen found in western Anatolia.
[1] [9] [14] [15] [16] Leopard fossils dating to ~43,000 BP were found in the Radochowska Cave in Poland. [10] The most complete skeleton of P. p. spelaea is known from Vjetrenica Cave in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, where four leopard fossils were found. These are dated to the end of the Late Pleistocene, about 29,000–37,000 years ago.
The Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) is the smallest leopard subspecies. It was described in 1830 and is native to the Arabian Peninsula , where it was widely distributed in rugged hilly and montane terrain until the late 1970s.
However, alleged leopard sightings are still being reported, and islanders believe that the Zanzibar leopard is still alive. [16] By the mid-1990s, the Zanzibar leopard population was considered extinct. [17] In 1997 and 2001, rumors circulated about the discovery of leopard scat, but both samples were lost before they could be analyzed. [5]