Spots are like finger prints!

Leopard rosettes (the markings on their bodies) are similar to human fingerprints, and they're the easiest thing that we can use to tell them apart. When it comes to running the analysis of all of our camera-trap data we have to be 100% sure that we haven't over or under counted the observable leopards from photographs (remember our statistics account for the leopards we can't see!). That's when we use simple rosette shapes and patterns as quick reference codes. Some look like smiley faces, others like letters, sometimes we're really lucky and the leopard has a scar or body scratch which makes id relatively quick. See if you can spot the "flower-like" pattern on the male leopard's back left leg below! These photographs were taken by Alex in 2009 as part of a leopard survey in the forests of the southern Cape South Africa. This leopard was photographed on two camera-traps set over 15 kilometres apart.

We expect leopards in Yala, Wilpattu and Horton Plains to use significantly smaller ranges due to the higher prey abundance, mainly chital deer and wild boar. Let's hope we can identify many from the camera-traps!