Leopard attack
Despite the leopard's (Panthera pardus) extensive range from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, attacks are regularly reported only in India and Nepal.
[8] Indian leopard attacks may have peaked during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coinciding with rapid urbanization.
[3] 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.
[15][16] 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.
[17] 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.
[18] 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.
[19] 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.
In Uganda, retaliatory attacks on humans increased when starving villagers began expropriating leopards' kills (a feeding strategy known as kleptoparasitism).
[25] 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.
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.
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.
[2][31] 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.
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.
A man-eating panther frequently breaks through the frail walls of village huts and carries away children and even adults as they lie asleep.
[55] 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.
[56][57][58][59] During predatory attacks, leopards typically bite their prey's throat or the nape of the neck, lacerating or severing jugular veins and carotid arteries, causing rapid exsanguination.
Multibacterial infection resulting from the contamination of wounds by leopard oral flora occurs in 5–30% of attack survivors, complicating recovery.
[60] In 1889 there was a leopard, said to be a panther, which had haunted the Mirso ledge of the Golis range for some years, and was supposed to have killed over a hundred people.
He stood high off the ground, was in fine condition, and showed abnormal development for its size in respect of pads, neck muscles and head.
