Leopard attacks are attacks inflicted upon humans, other leopards and other animals by the leopard. The frequency of leopard attacks on humans varies by geographical region and historical period. Despite the leopard's (Panthera pardus) extensive range from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, attacks are regularly reported only in India and Nepal. Among the five "big cats", leopards have been known to become man-eaters despite their smaller size compared to lions and tigers—only jaguars and snow leopards have a less fearsome reputation. However, leopards are established predators of non-human primates, sometimes preying on species as large as the western lowland gorilla. Other primates may make up 80% of the leopard's diet. While leopards generally avoid humans, they tolerate proximity to humans better than lions and tigers, and often come into conflict with humans when raiding livestock.
Indian leopard attacks may have peaked during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coinciding with rapid urbanization. Attacks in India are still relatively common, and in some regions of the country leopards kill more humans than all other large carnivores combined. The Indian states of Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal experience the most severe human–leopard conflict. In Nepal, most attacks occur in the midland regions (the Terai, midhills, and lesser Himalaya). One study concluded that the rate of leopard predation on humans in Nepal is 16 times higher than anywhere else, resulting in approximately 1.9 human deaths annually per million inhabitants, averaging 55 kills per year. In the former Soviet Central Asia, leopard attacks have been reported in the Caucasus, Turkmenia (present day Turkmenistan), and the Lankaran region of present-day Azerbaijan. Rare attacks have occurred in China.
Leopard predation on hominids
In 1970, South African paleontologist C. K. Brain showed that a juvenile Paranthropus robustus individual, SK 54, had been killed by a leopard at Swartkrans in Gauteng, South Africa approximately 1.8 million years ago. The SK 54 cranium bears two holes in the back of the skull—holes that perfectly match the width and spacing of lower leopard canine teeth. The leopard appears to have dragged its kill into a tree to eat in seclusion, much like leopards do today. Numerous leopard fossils have been found at the site, suggesting that the felids were predators of early hominids. The revelation that these injuries were not the result of interpersonal aggression but were leopard-inflicted dealt a fatal blow to the then-popular killer ape theory. Another hominid fossil consisting of a 6-million-year-old Orrorin tugenensis femur (BAR 1003'00), recovered from the Tugen Hills in Kenya, preserves puncture damage tentatively identified as leopard bite marks. This fossil evidence, along with modern studies of primate–leopard interaction, has fueled speculation that leopard predation played a major role in primate evolution, particularly on cognitive development.
Human–leopard conflict Reducing human–leopard conflict has proven difficult. Conflict tends to increase during periods of drought or when the leopard's natural prey becomes scarce. Shrinking leopard habitat and growing human populations also increase conflict. In Uganda, retaliatory attacks on humans increased when starving villagers began expropriating leopards' kills (a feeding strategy known as kleptoparasitism). The economic damage resulting from loss of livestock to carnivores caused villagers in Bhutan's Jigme Singye Wangchuck National Park to lose more than two-thirds of their annual cash income in 2000, with leopards blamed for 53% of the losses. Like other large carnivores, leopards are capable of surplus killing. Under normal conditions, prey are too scarce for this behavior, but when the opportunity presents itself leopards may instinctually kill in excess for later consumption. One leopard in Cape Province, South Africa killed 51 sheep and lambs in a single incident.
Translocation (the capture, transport, and release) of "problem leopards", as with other territorial felids, is generally ineffective: translocated leopards either immediately return or other leopards move in and claim the vacant territory. One translocated leopard in Cape Province traveled nearly to return to his old territory. Translocations are also expensive, tend to result in high mortality (up to 70%), and may make leopards more aggressive towards humans, thus failing as both a management and a conservation strategy. Historically, lethal control of problem animals was the primary method of conflict management. Although this remains the situation in many countries, leopards are afforded the highest legal protection in India under the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972—only man-eaters can be killed and only when they are considered likely to continue to prey on humans. In Uttarakhand, the state with the most severe human–leopard conflict, 45 leopards were legally declared man-eaters and shot by wildlife officials between 2001 and 2010.
Where legal, herders may shoot at leopards who prey on their livestock. An injured leopard may become an exclusive predator of livestock if it is unable to kill normal prey, since domesticated animals typically lack natural defenses. Frequent livestock-raiding may cause leopards to lose their fear of humans, and shooting injuries may have caused some leopards to become man-eaters. There has been increasing acceptance that the "problem leopard" paradigm may be anthropomorphization of normal carnivore behavior, and that translocations are unlikely to stop livestock depredation. In an effort to reduce the shooting of "problem leopards" and lessen the financial burden on herders, some governments provide monetary compensation, although the sum is often less than the value of the lost livestock. Number of human deaths due to leopard attacks† Country Region Deaths Year(s) Ref India Indian subcontinent ‡ 11,909 1875–1912 Compiled from official British records available at the Digital South Asia Library (University of Chicago and the Center for Research Libraries). 1. "Number of persons and cattle killed in British India by wild beasts and snakes ", Statistical abstract relating to British India from 1867–68 to 1876–77, (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office): p. 132, 1878, retrieved 30 March 2013. 2. "Number of persons and cattle killed in British India by wild beasts and snakes ", Statistical abstract relating to British India from 1876–77 to 1885–86, (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office): p. 240, 1887, retrieved 30 March 2013. 3. "Number of persons and cattle killed in British India by wild beasts and snakes ", Statistical abstract relating to British India from 1885–86 to 1894–95, (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office): p. 268, 1896, retrieved 30 March 2013. 4. "Number of persons and cattle killed in British India by wild animals and snakes ", Statistical abstract relating to British India from 1894–95 to 1903–04, (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office): p. 238, 1905, retrieved 30 March 2013. 5. "Number of persons and cattle killed in British India by wild animals and snakes ", Statistical abstract relating to British India from 1903–04 to 1912–13, (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office): p. 240, 1915, retrieved 30 March 2013. Bhagalpur district, Bihar 350 1959–1962 Uttarakhand 239 2000–2007 Throughout India (mainly Uttarakhand) 170 1982–1989 Pauri Garhwal district, Uttarakhand 140 1988–2000 Garhwal division, Uttarakhand 125 1918–1926 Gujarat 105 1994–2007 1. 2. Uttar Pradesh 95 1988–1998 Junagadh district, Gujarat 29 1990–2012 1. 2. Pune district, Maharashtra 18 2001–2003 Jammu and Kashmir 17 2004–2007 Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Maharashtra 16 1986–1996 North Bengal 15 1990–2008 1. 2. Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh 13 1987–2007 Chikkamagaluru district, Karnataka 11 1995 Kanha National Park, Madhya Pradesh 8 1961–1965 Himachal Pradesh 6 2000–2007 Nepal Baitadi district, Mahakali zone 15 2010–2012 Pokhara Valley, Gandaki zone 12 1987–1989 1. 2. 3. Pakistan Ayubia National Park, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 12 1989–2006 Machiara National Park, Azad Kashmir 2 2004–2007 Somalia Golis Mountains, Togdheer 100 c. 1889 South Africa Kruger National Park 5 1992–2003 1. 2. Sri Lanka Punanai, Batticaloa district 12 1923–1924 Zambia Chambezi River 67 1936–1937 Luangwa River 8 1938 † No comprehensive global database of fatal leopard attacks exists, and many countries do not keep official records. Due to the fragmentary nature of the data, the deaths reproduced here should be considered minimum figures only.‡ The territories forming British India (Bangladesh, Burma, India, and Pakistan)
Man-eaters
Characteristics The leopard is largely a nocturnal hunter. For its size, it is the most powerful large felid after the jaguar, able to drag a carcass larger than itself up a tree. Leopards can run more than , leap more than horizontally and vertically, and have a more developed sense of smell than tigers. They are strong climbers and can descend down a tree headfirst. Man-eating leopards have earned a reputation as being particularly bold and difficult to track. British hunters Jim Corbett (1875–1955) and Kenneth Anderson (1910–1974) wrote that hunting leopards presented more challenges than any other animal. Indian naturalist J. C. Daniel (1927–2011), former curator of the Bombay Natural History Society, reprinted many early twentieth-century accounts of man-eating leopards in his book The Leopard in India: A Natural History (Dehradun: Natraj Publishers, 2009). One such account in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society describes the unique danger posed by leopards: Like the tiger, the panther [leopard] sometimes takes to man-eating, and a man-eating panther is even more to be dreaded than a tiger with similar tastes, on account of its greater agility, and also its greater stealthiness and silence. It can stalk and jump, and...can climb better than a tiger, and it can also conceal itself in astonishingly meager cover, often displaying uncanny intelligence in this act. A man-eating panther frequently breaks through the frail walls of village huts and carries away children and even adults as they lie asleep.
One study concluded that only 9 of 152 documented man-eating leopards were female. Drawing on the sex and physical condition of 78 man-eating leopards, the same study concluded that man-eaters were typically uninjured mature males (79.5%), with a fewer number of aged and immature males (11.6% and 3.8%, respectively). Once a leopard has killed and eaten a human, they are likely to persist as man-eaters—they may even show a nearly exclusive preference for humans. In "Man-Eaters of Kumaon", Jim Corbett mentioned that leopards are driven to man-eating by acquiring a taste for human flesh due to scavenging on corpses thrown into the jungle during an epidemic and also due to humans being an easier catch, than other species they prey upon. He wrote,"A leopard, in an area in which his natural food is scarce, finding these bodies very soon acquires a taste for human flesh, and when the disease dies down and normal conditions are established, he very naturally, on finding his food supply cut off, takes to killing human beings". Of the two man-eating leopards of Kumaon, which between them killed 525 people, the Panar Leopard followed on the heels of a very severe outbreak of cholera, while the Rudraprayag Leopard followed the 1918 influenza epidemic which was particularly deadly in India.The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag, Jim Corbett, Oxford university press, Corbett wrote that the Rudraprayag man-eater once broke into a pen holding 40 goats, but instead of attacking the livestock it killed and ate the sleeping 14-year-old boy who had been assigned to guard them.