Common name
Scientific name
Evolutionary history and diversity of cats
Diversification of modern cat lineages
Earliest depictions
Earliest written record
Superstition, veneration and worship
Historical understanding of leopards as animals
Modern literature and visual arts
Human exploitation
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Infraclass: Eutheria
Order: Carnivora (cats, dogs, bears, raccoons, weasels, civets, mongooses, hyenas)
Family: Felidae (cats)
Subfamily: Pantherinae (leopard, lion, tiger, jaguar, snow leopard)
Genus: Panthera (great or roaring cats; includes: leopard, lion, tiger, jaguar)
Species: Panthera pardus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Subspecies: P. p. delacouri (Pocock, 1930) - SE Asia into southern China
Subspecies: P. p. fusca (Meyer, 1794) - India
Subspecies: P. p. japonensis (Gray, 1862) - northern China
Subspecies: P. p. kotiya (Deraniyagala, 1956) - Sri Lanka
Subspecies: P. p. melas (Cuvier, 1809) - Java
Subspecies: P. p. nimr (Hemprich and Ehrenberg 1833) - Arabia
Subspecies: P. p. orientalis (Schlegel, 1857) - far eastern Russia, Korean peninsula and NE China
Subspecies: P. p. pardus (Linnaeus, 1758) - Africa
Subspecies: P. p. saxicolor (Pocock, 1927) - Central Asia
Above taxonomy according to ITIS 2013 and Henschel et al. 2008.
The Greek god, Dionysus was often portrayed alongside a leopard.
Image credit: © Jastrow from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
AZA (2012)
Brown (1956)
Davis et al. (2010)
Duckworth and Pine (2003)
Guggisberg (1975)
Henschel et al. (2008)
Heptner and Sludskii (1992)
Houssaye and Budd (2009)
ITIS (2013)
O'Brien and Johnson (2005)
O'Brien and Johnson (2007)
Turnbull-Kemp (1967)
Werdelin and Dehghani (2011)
Werdelin (2013)