Rare Sunda clouded leopard captured up close
The Sunda clouded leopard, one of the world’s most rare and elusive cats, has been filmed up close in Malaysia by a biologist on holiday in the region.
The young female leopard was captured resting in the forest and experts believe this extraordinary footage is the only close-up film of the cat in the wild. Previously, this predator has only been filmed briefly at a distance.
Clouded leopards are the smallest of the so-called big cats, living in south east Asia.
They are not true leopards, being more distantly related to leopards, snow leopards, lions and tigers than those big cats are to each other.
For many years, experts thought there was a single species of clouded leopard. Then in 2007, Mr Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany and colleagues discovered there are actually two distinct species.
The clouded leopard of mainland Asia and Taiwan kept the traditional species name Neofelis nebulosa, and the Sunda clouded leopard living on Borneo and Sumatra, was named Neofelis diardi.
Experts, including Mr Wilting and Andrew Hearn of the Wildlife Conservation Unit at the University of Oxford, have reviewed the footage, which they say is exciting.
Another expert who manages a clouded leopard (N. nebulosa) captive breeding centre in Thailand said that the cat's size and appearance, including the length of its adult teeth, suggest it is a young female around 18 months old, rather than a cub.
The Sunda clouded leopard faces an uncertain future. It depends on forest however, according to the International Union for the Conservation for Nature (IUCN), its habitat on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is being cleared at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world.
