Diet Information

Hunting and diet[change | change source] Leopards hunt at different times, and they also use different methods for hunting. Most often leopards will secretly move towards their prey and attack it when they are close, or hide and wait for it to come close. Leopards are versatile, opportunistic hunters, and have a very wide diet. They feed on a wider range of prey than other members of the Panthera genus.[3] Their diet consists mostly of ungulates and primates (mainly monkeys). However, they also eat rodents, reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds (some ground-based types), fish and sometimes smaller predators (such as foxes, jackals, martens and smaller felids). In one instance, a leopard killed a sub-adult Nile crocodile that was crossing over land.[4] Leopards are the only natural predators of adult chimpanzees and gorillas, though probably not the large male silverback gorillas.[5] Leopards do not usually eat humans, but sometimes leopards that are hurt or sick can eat people when they do not have enough to eat.[6] A leopard in India is believed to have eaten more than 125 people.[7] Captive leopards are fed around 1 to 1.2 kg of meat daily. There is less information about the daily food intake of wild leopards. In the Kalahari it is recorded that male leopards consumed 3.5 kg per day. Females consumed 4.9 kg per day when they were with cubs. In the Tsavo National Park male leopards consumed 2 to 9.5 kg per night. In the Kruger National Park the meat consumption of two leopards was estimated to be between 4.4 to 4.7 kg per day. In the Nagarahole National Park, leopards spent an average of 2.1 days with each kill. They consumed an average of 11.2 kg per day per leopard. In north-eastern Namibia, single females consumed 1.6 kg per day whereas females with cubs consumed 2.5 kg per day. Male leopards in this area consumed 3.1 kg per day. A leopard may eat a quarter of their body weight in a day having adopted the “feast-or-famine” regime.