LEOPARD BEHAVIOR: COMMUNICATION, TERRITORY, MATING, CUB-RAISING

LEOPARD BEHAVIOR

North China leopard

Leopards are arboreal (live in trees), cursorial (with limbs adapted to running), terricolous (live on the ground), nocturnal (active at night), motile (move around as opposed to being stationary), and terrritorial (defend an area within the home range). Leopards are solitary animals except for mothers raising young and brief periods when a male and female come together for courtship and mating. On leopards, the naturalist Maitland Edey wrote, “he is an animal of the darkness and even in the dark he travels alone.” Leopards are very secretive and mainly nocturnal. Like tigers but unlike gregarious lions, they are solitary hunters. The only time leopards come together with other leopards is to mate and raise offspring.

The famous India-based big game hunter Colonel Jim Corbett said that leopards were the most intelligent and skilled hunters among the big cats. Another hunter described them a “remarkable escape artists.” Naturalist Pat Quillen of SOS-Care said: “Leopards are incredibly bold and clever like a coyote. They are too smart. I don’t trust them. Their expression stays the same, yet their minds are always working. Everything is a challenge to them — and they can have rapid mood changes.”

Leopards are mostly nocturnal. Because leopards hunt mainly at night they nap much of the day, often in trees. They sometimes sleep on their backs and are often seen asleep in trees, well camouflaged, their dangling tails being the only things that give them away. According to Animal Diversity Web (ADW) Although they sometimes hunt during overcast days, they are less diurnal (active during the daytime), in areas close to humans in comparison to uninhabited areas. Leopards are most comfortable in the lower forest canopy, where they often feed, and descend from the canopy head-first. They are comfortable in water and are adequate swimmers. When hunting, leopards move with a slow, crouching walk. They can run at bursts of up to 60 km per hour, jump more than six meters horizontally and three meters vertically. Leopards are facultative drinkers and obtain much of their water requirements from ingested prey. Leopard's have advanced vision and hearing, which makes them especially adept at hunting in dense forests. [Source: Ashley Hunt, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

The naturalist Norman Myers described the leopard as the most feline of the great cats. Like house cats, leopards spend a fair amount of time grooming themselves. They make loud rasping noises when they lick their paws. Even when covered with dew they will sidestep puddles to avoid getting their paws wet. Even so they are good swimmers

Leopard Territory

Leopards are very territorial animals. Individual animals often use the same pathways and cache their kills in the same tree time after time. Leopards mark off their territory with feces, urine, claw marks, facial-gland scent rubbed against objects, scraping, drooling, rolling on the ground, roaring, conspicuous movements — and fight fiercely to defend it.

Ideally, a leopard needs about 10 to 15 square kilometers with ample prey, water and shelter to exist comfortably. While females sometimes share their ranges with other females, the territories of males rarely overlap. The territory of a typical male may cover 14,000 acres and encompass the territory of four females If a tourist lodges lies within their territory then so be it.

The size of leopard range territory varies from 13 to 35 square kilometers. Male leopards have a core range of about 12 square kilometers, with a home range of about 35 square kilometers. Female's have a core range of about four square kilometers with a home range of about 13 square kilometers. Similar to other mammalian species, the home ranges of male's are larger and tend to overlap with those of multiple females. In Namibia, the home ranges of males overlapped 46 percent of the time and those of females overlapped about 35 percent of the time. Home ranges tend to be larger in arid conditions. [Source: Ashley Hunt, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Javanese leopards confine themselves to relatively small ranges. They usually prowl around only at night and spend the day living inside trees. They sometimes shadow villagers taking unattended livestock and if they can't finish it they are adept enough to carry the carcass up a tree to store it until another time. There are also leopards in Borneo and Sumatra. [Source: Return of Java's Wildlife" by Diter and Mary Plage, June 1985]

Leopard Senses and Communication

Leopards sense using vision, touch, sound and chemicals usually detected with smell and they communicate with touch, sound and chemicals usually detected by smelling. They also employ pheromones (chemicals released into air or water that are detected by and responded to by other animals of the same species) and scent marks produced by special glands and placed so others can smell and taste them. [Source: Ashley Hunt, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

Leopard’s mark their territory with urine, feces, and claw marks and communicate with members of their own species by growling, roaring, and spitting when aggravated and purring when content. They also make a rasping cough to advertise their presence to members of their own species. Their vocalizations include grunts, “husky sawing roars,” "woodsaw-like coughs” and "full-throated growls."

According to Animal Diversity Web (ADW): Although leopards are silent most of the time, they may give a hoarse, rasping cough at repeated intervals to advertise their presence to members of their own species. Males use this unique call to announce territorial (defend an area within the home range), boundaries. If another leopard is in the vicinity, it may answer with a similar vocalization and continue vocalizing as it exits the area. Males also grunt at each other and females call to potential mates when in estrous. Some leopards may purr while feeding.

Leopard Mating and Reproduction

Leopard are polygynandrous (promiscuous), with both males and females having multiple partners, and iteroparous. This means that offspring are produced in groups such as litters multiple times in successive annual or seasonal cycles. Leopards breed every 15 to 24 months. They engage in year-round breeding, often with peaks during the rainy season. In China and southern Siberia, leopards mainly breed in January and February. Females are in estrus for seven days and have a 46 day long cycle. [Source: Ashley Hunt, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

According to Animal Diversity Web: Females attract potential mates by excreting pheromones (chemicals released into air or water that are detected by and responded to by other animals of the same species) in their urine. Females initiate mating by walking back and forth in front of a male and brushing up against him or swatting him with her tail. The male then mounts the female while frequently biting her nape. Copulation last an average of three seconds with six minute intervals between each copulation bout. A single breeding pair share food resources during the mating period. /=\

Leopard mating can be quite rough. Males have barbs on their sex organs that may stimulate ovulation but likely also causes the female pain. It is not uncommon for the female to aggressively attack the male after copulation is over. Even with this being the case, a leopard pair may mate hundreds of times while a female is in estrus or more than a 100 times in a single day.

Leopard Cubs and Parenting

The gestation period for a leopard is 90 to 105 days, with an average of 96 days, but leopards reproduce relatively slowly because females give birth only once every couple of years. Litters generally consist of one to four cubs, usually two or three. It is unusual for all leopard cubs to survive and sometimes mothers lose their entire litters. The cubs are often taken by baboons, hyenas and other predators. They are also sometimes poisoned by tribesmen or ranchers. Typically one cub survives and is weaned by three months.

Females usually give birth once every 15 to 24 months. The average weaning age is three months and the age in which they become independent ranging from 13 to 18 months. On average females reach sexual or reproductive maturity at 2.5 years; with males doing so at two years. Typically, females stop reproducing around 8.5 years old. [Source: Ashley Hunt, Animal Diversity Web (ADW) /=]

According to Animal Diversity Web: Leopard cubs weigh less than one kilograms at birth, and their eyes remain closed for the first week. Mothers leave their cubs in the protection of dense bush, rock clefts, or hollow tree trunks for up to 36 hours while hunting and feeding. They move den sites frequently, which helps prevent cubs from falling prey to lions and other predators. Cubs learn to walk at two weeks of age and regularly leave the den at six to eight weeks old, around which time they begin to eat solid food. Mothers share less than a third of their food with their cubs. Often, siblings maintain contact during the early years of independence. Territories are flexible and young may linger in their natal area.

Cubs stay with their mother for a year or more and siblings sometimes associate for longer than that. Young cubs are raised in dens in trees or in caves. The fathers do not stick around to help protect the cubs and the mother leaves them alone when she is off hunting. Surviving cubs are often very well hidden by their mothers. When the female returns from a hunt mother and cubs rub against and lick one another.

The mother teaches her offspring how to hunt. Cubs are fed on kills even before they are weaned. The mother will often let older cubs practice their hunting skills on an animal she has recently killed. Young leopard cubs also develop hunting skills though play. To amuse themselves during their long waits for their mother, leopards cubs often play with a branch, which also helps them increase their dexterity for hunting.

Dangerous World of a Leopard Cub

Dereck Joubert wrote in National Geographic, “She was eight days old when we spotted her. Her eyes were still milky gray, and she wobbled slightly. Emerging into the sunlight from her den, she seemed curious and bold, taking no notice of screeching squirrels. Her mother had lost five previous cubs to hyenas, baboons, and other predators. What would happen to this one? Finding any leopard is difficult, so when we discovered this mother and cub in the thick groves of ebony and acacia trees at Mombo, an area in Botswana's Okavango Delta, we decided to follow the little one as she grew up. [Source: Dereck Joubert, National Geographic, April 2007]

“From her first days, Legadema, as we came to call her ("light from the sky" in the Setswana language), was under constant threat. Whether it was a troop of baboons that tried to drag both mother and daughter out of their den, or the lurking hyenas, death was never far away. Lions, a significant threat to young leopards, thrive in this part of the Moremi Game Reserve. But none of this kept Legadema from exploring the forest on her own when her mother left her alone for days at a time to bring back meat. Wherever Legadema went, vervet monkeys with darting eyes spotted her a mile off, and squirrels set up alarm calls. In time, these incidents only made her better at concealment and stealth.

“Her mother, a patient teacher, instructed Legadema in the skills she would need to survive as a predator: how to pin down prey and where to clamp on their throats with her jaws to suffocate them. Only after mastering these and many other lessons would she grow into the solitary hunter that all leopards must one day become.

Mother Leopard Teaching Her Young to Hunt

Dereck Joubert wrote in National Geographic, “As they patrolled their territory and hunted together, Legadema seemed a mirror image of her mother. The two formed a strong bond during their first years, sometimes playing like siblings. Once after playing around a tree Legadema slipped and her mother had to save her from a 60-meter fall — a tricky maneuver for an animal equipped only with teeth, claws, and determination. [Source: Dereck Joubert, National Geographic, April 2007]

“When Legadema was five months old, her mother brought her a live baby impala. At first Legadema wasn’t sure what to do, playing inquisitively, then attacking ineffectually. Her mother guided her tolerant through every step of the kill, until at last Legadema learned that living animals can become a meal. Her predator skills honed, Legadema turned her attention to squirrels, becoming almost obsessed with dizzying and deadly games of hide-and-seek. Over time, she grew adept, killing hundreds of squirrels as well as such larger prey as baby warthogs.

“Despite her deep fear of baboons, Legadema one day killed an adult female. When she discovered a newborn clinging to the baboon mother’s fur, the situation took a bizarre turn. The ting baboon innocently reached out to Legadema, accepting her as its new mother. Legadema initially seemed confused, but for the next for hours, she watched over the baby baboon, then groomed it and gently carried it to safer branches higher in the tree whenever the baby cried. Eventually the two cuddle together and went to sleep. Was Legadema feeling early maternal instincts? Before the night was over, he cold claimed the life of the helpless infant, and Legadema left the baby to resume her role as predator, feeding on the mother baboon’s body.

“At 13 months old — still an adolescent — Legadema got into a spat with her mother that escalated into a permanent rift. The cause: Legadema’s refusal to share a kill. Although tension between the two had been building for some time, Legadema was now demonstrating her independence. And her mother drover her away...Legadema shared part of her mother’s territory for a while. Later she established her own territory.” In 2006" at the age of three and half she mated.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated January 2025