Animal Directory Featured species in the planned Big Cat Canyon habitat
African Leopard
Panthera pardus pardus
Fun facts
- The most widely-distributed wild cat — African leopards still range across sub-Saharan Africa from rainforest to semi-desert, making the species the most adaptable big cat alive.
- Pound-for-pound the strongest tree-climber of any big cat; a leopard can haul prey almost twice its own weight straight up a vertical trunk to cache it away from lions and hyenas.
- Their rosettes are smaller and denser than the jaguar's, and almost never enclose a central black spot — the easiest field mark to tell the two species apart.
- Leopards are nearly silent hunters; they vocalise with a low, rasping "sawing" call that sounds like wood being cut, used by territorial males at dawn and dusk.
- Despite the wide range, the IUCN tracks steep regional declines — North African and Arabian leopards are critically endangered, which is why African leopards anchor international ex-situ insurance populations.
From the master plan
The African Leopard shares the canyon’s mid-tier ledges with its Amur cousin, but is staged in a warmer, drier savannah-edge habitat with cached “prey” platforms in tall acacia analogues. Together the two leopards let guests compare the same cat’s adaptations to extreme cold versus extreme heat — the Big Cat Canyon’s most direct biology lesson.
IUCN status sourced from the Leopard (Panthera pardus) assessment (Stein et al., 2024) on the IUCN Red List — species-level listing of Vulnerable with a decreasing population trend; the African subspecies Panthera pardus pardus is the most numerous of the leopard’s nine subspecies.
Find them in
Big Cat Canyon
Powerful predators, dramatic landscapes, unforgettable encounters
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