North China leopard
| North-Chinese leopard | |
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| A leopard at Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, France | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Suborder: | Feliformia |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Genus: | Panthera |
| Species: | P. pardus |
| Subspecies: | P. p. orientalis |
| Trinomial name | |
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Panthera pardus orientalis (Schlegel, 1857) |
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| Synonyms | |
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formerly:
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formerly:
The North-Chinese leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), also known as North China leopard, is a leopard population native to northern China. Population data are not available from the wild.
Before being subsumed by the Cat Classification Task Force of the Cat Specialist Group to P. p. orientalis, it was regarded as a separate subspecies, with the taxonomic name P. p. japonensis.
The North-Chinese leopard was first described on the basis of a single tanned skin, which was fulvous above and pale beneath with large roundish, oblong black spots on the back and limbs, and small black spots on the head. The spots on the back, shoulders and sides formed a ring around a central fulvous spot. The black spots on the nape were elongated, and large ones on the chest formed a necklace. The tail was spotted and had four black rings at the tip.
It is similar in size to the Amur leopard, and its coats is darker and almost orange in colour. The rosettes are also darker, smaller and closer together with the possibility of spots being within the rosettes, a trait more often found in jaguars than in leopards. Its fur is also relatively long when compared to other leopard subspecies. The average weight of adult wild males is 50 kg (110 lb) and of adult females 32 kg (71 lb).
Historic records from before 1930 indicate that North-Chinese leopards lived near Beijing and in the mountains to the north-west. They possibly ranged up to the southern Ussuri region. It was previously estimated that about 2,500 North-Chinese leopards remain in the wild of China. As of today, only small and isolated populations remain, as estimated by the bureau in Shanxi. They also lived in Lanzhou in Northwest China, north to the mountains at the southern region of the Chinese Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia, and near Harbin in the northeast.
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Wikipedia