Two scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) have found that the clouded leopard in western Assam’s Manas National Park and Tiger Reserve seems to play a mysterious game of hide-and-seek in the tropical canopy forests.
The mainland clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) is often likened to the Ice Age sabretooth because it has the largest canines in proportion to its skull size among all cat species. It also has rotating rear ankles that enable it to climb down head first from trees, unlike the other felines.
The duo — carnivore ecologist Salvador Lyngdoh and research scholar Urjit Bhatt, both from the Department of Landscape-level Planning and Management at WII — also observed that the cat with cloud-like spots on its hide does not follow any specific pattern of operating in a certain space, unlike other carnivores.
