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Wildlife Featured in this article
- Leopard
Leopard roars reveal their identity
Leopard vocalizations can help researchers conduct population estimates and manage human-wildlife conflicts
Identifying leopards by their roars can help researchers conserve the species threatened by habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict. The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists leopards (Panthera pardus) as vulnerable, but scientists struggle to gather data on them because they are solitary, nocturnal and occur across large expanses of land. In a study published in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, researchers paired camera traps with autonomous recording surveys in Nyerere National Park in Tanzania. Then, they trained a model to analyze the pattern of a leopard’s roar and match it with the individual. The model successfully identified individual leopards from their roars 93% of the time. The researchers say this information will be helpful for population estimates and may even help conservation practitioners manage landscapes and mitigate human-wildlife conflicts. “Discovering that leopards have unique roars is an important but fundamentally quite basic finding that shows how little we know about leopards and large carnivores in general,” said lead author of the study Jonathan Growcott, a PhD student at the University of Exeter. “We hope it will allow leopards to become the focus of more acoustically complex science such as population density studies and open the door to more work on how large carnivores use vocalizations as a tool.”
Read the study in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation.
Header Image: A leopard in Selous Game Reserve, Namkongo. Credit: Charlotte Searle