That cat is an Indian leopard, even though the caption clearly says “Chetah [sic] for Hunting–India.”
I hope they didn’t try to use that leopard to hunt blackbuck or deer.
Leopards are ambush predators. They rely upon camouflage and their strength to bring down much larger prey than themselves.
I doubt that a leopard would have been any use at hunting these animals in the same fashion as the trained hunting cheetahs.
And if a leopard caught one, leopards are much more protective of their kills than cheetahs are. I’d hate to have to fight one off a kill.
Leopards have another important disadvantage. They are among the few animals that normally consider people to be a prey source. As far as I know, cheetahs really don’t hunt people or attack them unless threatened.
Leopards think we taste pretty good.
But we’re not nearly as tasty as our dogs are.
PET LEOPARDS – the most cost effective way to rid the neighborhood of stray dogs.
Sorry, never buy me Cointreau – my sense of humor wakes up.
I am amazed that we DON’T have a surviving, reproducing population of leopards somewhere in the U. S.! As many big exotic cats as get released by irresponsible owners, or escape, it is a miracle that as adaptive as leopards are, and as secretive as they can be, even in fairly developed locals, that some have not(yet?) established themselves……Control stray dogs Utah Neff? You bet, and they’d control stray people, too, probably!!!! I visited East Africa many years ago, and one of the neatest, most interesting people I met was a 3rd generation Greek farmer/rancher named Dmitri–he was chock-full of great stories and adventures! When I met him, he was thrilled that a young male lion had recently moved into his area, even though he expected to lose some stock(goats or cattle) to it. When I asked him why, he said he had much more of a problem from local people raiding his herds and crops, but whenever a lion or leopard moved into the district(it was a fairly developed area he lived in due to the inevitable “progress”) and it became generally known to the populace, nightime raids on his ranch from humans virtually ceased! Nothing like a patrolling lion or leopard as a “watch dog”!!!
I had a neighbor once, who claimed that there was a big black leopard that roamed the wooded areas near where he grew up. He said people had seem it, and he had once glimpsed it in the dark.
I assumed that it was a black tomcat, but maybe it was a pet leopard that went feral? He was of an age where keeping exotic animals would have been more common.
The British often claim to have seen a big wild cat. It could be their imagination, but it could be a pet exotic taking it’s self out for a walk.
One of my favorite Reader’s Digest joke was about a man who exercised his pet cheeta by taking it a dirt road, putting the cat out of the car, driving slowly while the cat trotted along with him.
But the cat wouldn’t follow the car well, so he tied a rope to the bumper, and tied a broom to the rope. Then he would zoom ahead of the cat, and then wait for it ahead.
People no doubt watched what appeared to be a crazy driver dragging a broom behind his car,, and were surprised when the cheeta come sprinting down the road.
Utah Neff–that neighbor wasn’t from N. C. was he? Where I am living now, in the Uwharrie forest, N. C., there is a record of a black leopard that escaped from a small roadside menagerie(those wretched places used to be quite common once-upon-a-time…) and was never recaptured, and basically lived its life out and was seen numerous times in the area. One well known local who has written books about the history of the area claims it followed him one night as he was walking home from somewhre when he was a kid, and that it scared him to death, but didn’t act aggressive at all–it may still have expected humans to feed it, as it was soon after it’s escape. This case was unique in that no one claimed it was a black cougar(very common, but erroneous assumption, where people assume incorrectly that a “black panther” is a black cougar, since cougars are also colloquially called “panthers” in the East, but, of course, they do not have a black color phase like leopards or jaguars and other cats), because everyone knew it was a leopard and how and why it was in the area. The situation in England(and Australia!) is mostly misidentification, hysteria, and hoaxing, but it certainly is not impossible, given the market for exotic pets–especially big cats. I did see what seemed to be a reliable report of the skeletal remains of a leopard found in an old barn in an area of England where “black panther” sightings had been taking place–so if accurate(and not part of an elaborate hoax–planting skeletal material would not be that difficult, of course), this animal may have been an escapee/release that simply and secretively lived its life out like the one in my area supposedly did, leaving behind a cryptozoological controversy! If several such leopards could survive and breed in such an area, I do not doubt they could fairly easily establish a viable population–but I don’t think it has happened yet in any of these “non-native” places. One problem I find with most of these sightings is that they are always BLACK animals–never spotted ones, which genetically are dominant AND more common in captivity as well–you’d be getting lots of spotted sightings if such were really happening(logically, that is….). And believe it or not, people DO see black housecats and really believe they’ve seen a “black panther”–I didn’t used to think ANYONE could be that poor at identifying animals, but I have personally dealt with this phenomenon now, and yes, otherwise intelligent(but perhaps overly urbanized) people DO think they’ve seen such when indeed it was just a housecat! I guess other housecats get identified by their color as much as their size, but black ones get misproportioned in peoples’ minds all the time! Bizarre!…And neat story about the Cheetah!
Yes, I disbelieved people who say they saw a big cat, but as ‘Dracula’ once said in a movie, the great thing about actually being a vampire is that nobody believes in them, so nobody believes your victims.
I watched a show on Animal Planet called Fatal Attractions, I think it was friday night. There was a guy who raised a tiger in his apartment in harlem. They said that across the street was an old folks home, and the old people housed there, with nothing else to do, would look out the window and glimpse his tiger. They would tell people about it, but people assumed that they had gone nuts – because we all assume that there just couldn’t be a tiger in an apartment in harlem.
But there was. I am often surprised by things that I don’t believe could be true, but are.
We had TWO tigers seen walking down a rural road here in N. C., a few years back. When authorities investigated the report, not only did they see the tigers too, but the tigers jumped in the back of their truck–they were young and still friendly, luckily!(probably very hungry, too!) These guys were lucky–they got housed at the N. C. zoo where I work(I got to visit with them briefly once!), before going to a rescue facility. No one ever reported their missing tigers or claimed them(wise–they woulda been in a helluva lot of trouble if they had!). This kind of stuff happens way more frequently than the general public knows, so I have no doubts that SOME big cat sightings are probably quite true……
I had lions jump into the back of the truck that I was in at Lion Country Safari in California. It was neat.
However, I’m picturing this: 2 guys diving down a road, going “Yeah, we got called out to try to find tigers. You think there are any tigers running around North Carolina, Bob?”
“Bill, if there are any tigers running around the woods here they aren’t the 4 legged kind. Pass me a beer would you?”
“I don’t know, Bob, what do you think they did see?”
“Bill, they didn’t see nothing. Only a crazy drugged up nuto would think he sees tigers around here. Wait! Look what hopped in our truck. Look 2 tigers”. – – – – –
Oh, I don’t know where my ex-neighbor grew up. Somewhere in the South – he used the term “Yankee” for non-Southerners.
There were 2 different reports of dead tigers found along a road in Texas several years back. The police thought that they were pets turned over to a ‘rescue’ who sold them to one of those pay to hunt exotics places that are so very common in Texas. I understand that this is often the fate of big cat pets whose owners can’t keep them.
Perhaps that is how those North Carolina big cats got there – someone turned them loose for a paying party of hunters to hunt, but the big cat excaped the hunters and their dogs. Maybe simply by turning around on the baying hounds and killing them, and then running off – the hunter then couldn’t follow without the dogs to lead the way?
But, as you say, who is going to call and say “My illegal pet tiger excaped into the woods – have you any reports of missing hikers, or half eaten dogs?”
I forget the numbers, but i remember being surprised by how many pet tigers are said to be in the US – and I’m guessing that they are a very under reported pet.