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Post by CoolJohnson on Sept 9, 2023 3:25:42 GMT
grippingwhiteness PumAcinonyx SuperCat Curious if you guys in particular have any thoughts on this, I'm talking about the potential that leopards are perhaps proportionately superior or at least in some ways more impressive than tigers and lions? Some testimonies seem to suggest so. In terms of adaptivity, no modern big cat compares to the leopard as the Leopard is the most widespread big cat in existence today. I'd even suggest they are very good at thriving despite heavy persecution aswell. In terms of pound for pound abilities, not because I'm a fan of them but I think that also cougars are pound for pound superior to lions and tigers. In my opinion in terms of pfp formidability, a list would be 1)Jaguar 2)Leopard/Cougar 3)Tiger/Lion 4)Snow leopard 5)Cheetah. But it's all subjectivity Lions and Tigers seem more powerful than most big cats. I gues a Jaguar might be stronger, but they also seem a bit overrated. |
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Post by Hardcastle on Sept 9, 2023 3:30:54 GMT
In terms of adaptivity, no modern big cat compares to the leopard as the Leopard is the most widespread big cat in existence today. I'd even suggest they are very good at thriving despite heavy persecution aswell. In terms of pound for pound abilities, not because I'm a fan of them but I think that also cougars are pound for pound superior to lions and tigers. In my opinion in terms of pfp formidability, a list would be 1)Jaguar 2)Leopard/Cougar 3)Tiger/Lion 4)Snow leopard 5)Cheetah. But it's all subjectivity Lions and Tigers seem more powerful than most big cats. I gues a Jaguar might be stronger, but they also seem a bit overrated. I gotta say my instinct has always been lions and tigers are clearly above, even proportionately. In power anyway. The robusticity study threw a bit of a spanner in the works, and then these testimonials where many people who actually interacted with these animals and hunted them all seem to be more impressed with the leopard (and I do believe you learn a lot about performance through this activity that "field research" can't necessarily replicate). I'm not fully swayed, but hanging it out there. My instinct is still telling me lions and tigers are proportionately more powerful beasts. |
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Post by Shortridge on Oct 8, 2023 22:35:39 GMT
Leopards are enigmatic cats. Very underrated in my opinion. Social media and documentaries have portrayed them as this cat that lives in trees all day even though they just sleep and eat there. Does anyone know of the tree climbing lions in Uganda? It's worth a google image search I'd say, you can see a whole pride rest in trees. No one is denying that leopards do this because they have to or they risk losing their kill but leopards also hide their kills in bushes when the kill is too heavy. How badass can a cat be that it's so widespread it competes with every other land predator besides cougars and jaguars? The rest is on the list and whilst it's known to be subordinate the majority of the time (no shame when your opponents are tigers, lions and bears or animals living in packs) it has also been proven that they can be the apex predator. In warmer seasons the leopard for example is known to enter snow leopard habitat (they live at a higher altitude) and this negatively affects the snow leopard. In terms of leopard-bear it's not always clear. For example Amur leopards are smallish leopards who have to compete with the very large Ussuri brown bear so the outcome is pretty clear. In Iran it becomes interesting as the Persian leopard is big and Syrian brown bear is smaller than a grizzly or Ussuri bear. Here's a comparison between two males:  Now the bear is clearly bigger, I don't doubt for a second that the leopard will flee when such a bear approaches him. Now here's the same male leopard and a sow with a cub:  Here I'm sure the leopard can dominate the sow in a fight or a confrontation over a kill. I don't think either wants to fight actually and there will probably be a mutual avoidance. I believe the same behaviour is common in Sri Lanka, where the leopards sometimes face the Sri Lankan sloth bear which is smaller than its Indian counterpart. Here you can see a male leopard in Wilpattu NP patrolling and encountering a sloth bear, it isn't scared nor is it aggressive because it's not worth fighting a sloth bear that isn't even a competitor nor will the sloth bear attack. They are aware of each other capabilities. The leopard literally leaves and goes on with his patrolling: Moving on to leopard-man; it's generally known that the leopard is more feared than a lion by hunters. I'm not saying you can win a fight with a lion but in group and armed usually one person has to face the wrath of the lion while the rest kill him before he can. Leopards don't focus on a single target, they attack and switch to another one. Another thing is that a lion can seen coming early enough to react but a leopard can burst out of nowhere and before you know it he's on you. A wounded leopard is a nightmare for hunters. If you shoot a leopard from a blind spot and he isn't at the "crime scene" you're in trouble. I've seen professional hunters shoot one at day only to look after it at night, hoping it died by then. A wounded or cornered leopard is vicious, it will do anything to escape. The video of a male lion charging a male leopard is a great example; the male leopard retaliated and literally jumped at the male lion. They can be psychopaths according to trainers. Especially the males of course. There's something special about a big male leopard. There's a reason they used to think there were two different species in Central Africa based on the skulls: one was small whereas the other (i.e. males) were huge and much more developed. It's not a rule written in stone but some male leopards can have such an attitude you just become a fan of them. They can sit around 5 hyenas at a kill or even chase off 2 lioness off a kill (I have the account). Ignore a pride of lions like they aren't there. Call them what you want; cocky, brave, stupid, reckless, ... They do certain things that cannot be explained. People often say "leopards never cease to amaze me" because it's true. You think you'd seen it all but then some new footage pops up and you just sit in awe because it can be unbelievable. It started with Burnt Ebony male ignoring those lions like a boss followed by Tjellahanga male fighting off 4 huge lionesses. Especially the latter made people believe "male leopards can fight off pride of lions". Not really but he did show that a male leopard can be a powerful adversary. It's the same like the good old "jaguars are leopards on steroids". Until you show them a leopard as muscular as a jaguar and they start flipping and come up with excuses "the jag is probably a female" or "wrong camera angle". For real I have shut up Pantherine/Balam and Pckts many times as well as Comfylounge who's active here under a different name. The latter doesn't even know the difference between low and high neck circumference. He only used it to try and make it appear a cougar has a neck as massive as a male leopard. Leopards are seen as the most formidable predator in Africa. That's why people with power usually wear leopard skin like hats because the leopard is a symbol of power. There were even people who believed they could transform into leopards; they wore skins and claws and killed people. A bit far obviously but it shows how much people can worship an animal. (link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_Society). This may be quite random and off-topic but it's a quick description of what the leopard means besides the docs and videos of Kruger tourists. Another thing I'd like to address it that the leopard has an absurd power-to-weight ratio. Kevin Richardson AKA 'The Lion Whisperer' acknowledged this and said he wouldn't go near a leopard scaled up to a lion. Starts at 1:35 |
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Post by Bolushi on Oct 8, 2023 22:56:01 GMT
Who is it? If they're here surely they never ever post?
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Post by Shortridge on Oct 8, 2023 23:10:07 GMT
Who is it? If they're here surely they never ever post? colein = Comfylounge |
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Post by Bolushi on Oct 8, 2023 23:15:51 GMT
Who is it? If they're here surely they never ever post? colein = Comfylounge Really? That's a surprise. He had a very odd amount of respect for Dogos compared to the shit he said on carnivora about german shepherds being better at fighting cougars than dogos and all dogos should die etc. etc. |
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Post by Hardcastle on Oct 9, 2023 11:03:21 GMT
Who is it? If they're here surely they never ever post? colein = Comfylounge If I knew that I would have paid more attention to Colein. |
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Post by Shortridge on Oct 10, 2023 19:16:36 GMT
If I knew that I would have paid more attention to Colein. Someone else immediately noticed it was him. I noticed too when I checked the thread couple of days before. He starts with saying silly things, their forelimbs are like day and night which is obviously a gross exaggeration, calls the leopard overrated with no example(s) of why it's overrated. To make it even better, he compares zoo specimens and finds the cougar looks stronger. That's fine as you can't really prove otherwise but then he says it's "objectively correct". He makes a statement, says it's it's subjective only to say it's also objectively true? He also immediately brought up the cougar-leopard neck comparison but he manipulated the data because the cougars were measured via method low neck circumference (at the end of the neck near the shoulders) unlike the leopards who were measured via high neck circumference (directly behind the skull) which is standard because that's how they collar cats. |
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Post by Shortridge on Oct 11, 2023 9:28:34 GMT
Male leopard, lioness and tigress in a circus   |
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Post by Shortridge on Oct 19, 2023 19:21:09 GMT
Alright I'm curious what you guys are thinking about this: http://instagram.com/p/CyiT2z3Lhnf Two times (in August and this month) a female leopard joins a male lion to mate. You can see she's collared but in the video she isn't. I have no clue what's going on. My first guess is she's obviously trying to mate and perhaps there are simply no male leopards but why didn't the male lion chase or kill her? This... Just doesn't make sense. |
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Post by Bolushi on Oct 19, 2023 19:32:04 GMT
Well for starters that male lion looks young, so that could have something to do with it?
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Post by Shortridge on Oct 19, 2023 19:39:27 GMT
Well for starters that male lion looks young, so that could have something to do with it? If you look at the photos he has a well-grown mane. Also this is in Mozambique, not all male lions have massive manes. In West Africa their manes are also less prominent. Again I don't know what's going on, you could be right for all we know. It's very weird, I'd say it's a 'once in a lifetime sighting' but it happened twice within months. |
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Post by Hardcastle on Oct 20, 2023 2:43:23 GMT
IMO it is not an issue of the lion being young or old, it is an issue of the peculiar body language of the leopardess throwing the lion off. Animals react to body language, that is the MAIN thing they pay attention to. So just not acting how a leopard is supposed to act- scared. Whether expressed via flight or fight. That is quite liable to throw off a lion. Baby antelopes can throw them off by being calm and staying still as well. "Playing dead" also works not just for opossums and not only on certain predators, it can potentially work for all sorts of prey animals on all sorts of predators.
This confused leopardess is acting like a "female in heat". The lion is as confused as it should be. Its desire to kill is naturally not triggered by such body language, but it is also too confused to just calmly be like "welp... guess we're fuggin", so it sort of doesn't know what to do with itself.
It's actually not that weird, apart from the fact where the leopard seems to have her wires crossed and be behaving in an abnormal way, which itself is also not that rare in nature. To have misguided behaviour patterns or crossed wires or whatever, particularly in mammals who have their behaviour shaped by their upbringing (rather than hard-wired in since birth, where less can go wrong). A lot can "go wrong" in the building of that complex animal, and somewhere a long the way this leopardess lost a healthy intuitive fear of lions and is not distinguishing between that male lion and a male leopard, or perhaps just discerning it is a superior leopard which is why she is so particularly amorous.
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Post by CoolJohnson on Oct 20, 2023 4:02:19 GMT
If I knew that I would have paid more attention to Colein. Someone else immediately noticed it was him. I noticed too when I checked the thread couple of days before. He starts with saying silly things, their forelimbs are like day and night which is obviously a gross exaggeration, calls the leopard overrated with no example(s) of why it's overrated. To make it even better, he compares zoo specimens and finds the cougar looks stronger. That's fine as you can't really prove otherwise but then he says it's "objectively correct". He makes a statement, says it's it's subjective only to say it's also objectively true? He also immediately brought up the cougar-leopard neck comparison but he manipulated the data because the cougars were measured via method low neck circumference (at the end of the neck near the shoulders) unlike the leopards who were measured via high neck circumference (directly behind the skull) which is standard because that's how they collar cats. I thought colein was comfylounge, but I could be wrong. |
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Post by Shortridge on Oct 20, 2023 18:19:57 GMT
IMO it is not an issue of the lion being young or old, it is an issue of the peculiar body language of the leopardess throwing the lion off. Animals react to body language, that is the MAIN thing they pay attention to. So just not acting how a leopard is supposed to act- scared. Whether expressed via flight or fight. That is quite liable to throw off a lion. Baby antelopes can throw them off by being calm and staying still as well. "Playing dead" also works not just for opossums and not only on certain predators, it can potentially work for all sorts of prey animals on all sorts of predators. This confused leopardess is acting like a "female in heat". The lion is as confused as it should be. Its desire to kill is naturally not triggered by such body language, but it is also too confused to just calmly be like "welp... guess we're fuggin", so it sort of doesn't know what to do with itself. It's actually not that weird, apart from the fact where the leopard seems to have her wires crossed and be behaving in an abnormal way, which itself is also not that rare in nature. To have misguided behaviour patterns or crossed wires or whatever, particularly in mammals who have their behaviour shaped by their upbringing (rather than hard-wired in since birth, where less can go wrong). A lot can "go wrong" in the building of that complex animal, and somewhere a long the way this leopardess lost a healthy intuitive fear of lions and is not distinguishing between that male lion and a male leopard, or perhaps just discerning it is a superior leopard which is why she is so particularly amorous. I don't think it's a distraction to make sure the lion doesn't kill her. As we know females tend to fake mate with other males when she already has cubs to distract them. A female leopard with cubs will distract the lion in an aggressive way by bluff charging and running away from the den site. If there's no other choice, the leopard will confront the lion/lioness. Sounds fake but it has been observed more than once. I believe she's a young adult in heat for the first time and perhaps there are no male leopards in vicinity. I've read some reports that there are big baboon troops because of the lack of male leopards. The sightings also seem to incline that she approached the lion and followed him. I believe the lion is confused and doesn't know what to do as you mentioned. There's no defensive or aggressive behaviour, she's relaxed around him and trying to seduce him. Maybe he later scent marked and showed his dominance? We've only seen a short clip or her seducing him. |
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