Leopard moms hide babies in sugarcane fields to go hunting
Popular Science...
Leopards (Panthera pardus) in India are doing pretty well, all things considered. According to a report published in 2024, experts estimate their population in the country at a range of 12,616 to 15,132 individuals, which wildlife biologist Thomas Sharp calls “a healthy number.”
Part of their success could be due to the fact that leopards are enduring in areas close to human settlements where their bigger feline relatives, like tigers or lions, simply can’t—partly thanks to their secretive nature and the fact that they subsist on smaller prey.
“This is a good thing in many ways, with the way the world’s been changing and habitat degradation and everything else,” Sharp, who is the director of conservation and research at the organization Wildlife SOS tells Popular Science. “It’s a good thing that they can hang on in some of these areas. But there’s always a tradeoff, and the negative is they get involved in a lot of human-leopard conflict.”
Unsurprisingly, this sort of conflict is usually to the detriment of the leopard. The big cats rarely attack humans, and when they do, the animal is usually acting defensively, Sharp explains. Leopards will more frequently prey on small animals, such as goats or dogs.
However, areas in India are now seeing more and more cases of a much more cute encounter: leopard cubs hanging out in sugarcane. The dynamic sounds relatively simple. Humans replace leopard habitat with thick sugarcane fields, and so leopards take the change in stride and start to live—and make babies—in the new flora.
With this new dynamic, humans may come across leopard cubs on their own while the mother is off hunting. The discovery could consist of a passerby hearing their meowing, or a farmer finding them as they harvest their crop. Often the well-intentioned individual will think the cubs are abandoned and move them, “or even take them home because they are so cute and willing to play with humans,” Sharp says.
This might sometimes be necessary for their own safety, so they don’t get injured by harvesting machinery. But the removal separates the cubs from their mother.
“A big part of what Wildlife SOS does in these areas is to make sure people know that, if possible, the cubs should be left where they are found,” Sharp explains. “Their mother’s likely going to come back for them within a few hours.”
If the cubs are moved, Wildlife SOS sends a rescue team to check on the cub’s health and then send them back to their mother as fast as possible. Not only do cubs belong with their mothers, but some evidence indicates that a leopard mother can become more aggressive while looking for her babies, so it’s also in the best interest of nearby humans, according to Sharp.
Akash Dolas
To make the reunion happen, Wildlife SOS will put the leopard cub or cubs in a box where they were found, or as close to that location as possible. The box has holes so that the leopard mother can hear and smell them, and it protects the cubs from other predators while also keeping them from wandering off. When the mother finds them, she’ll usually knock the box over, and then carry her one or more babies somewhere else.
The organization sets up camera traps to keep an eye on the dynamic, making sure that the family is indeed reunited. To date, they have returned 112 cubs back to 73 mothers, and the five cubs that couldn’t be reunited live at the Wildlife SOS leopard rescue center.
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