Close call: Stork barely escapes leaping leopard (video)
When it comes to acrobatic hunts, leopards rarely disappoint. These sleek felines are masterful ambushers, experts of the well-timed pounce, and can move through the treetops with astonishing agility (although even the nimblest of cats take a tumble sometimes). But for all their hunting prowess, leopards do not always land their quarry, as a group of tourists on a recent visit to Tanzania found out while watching a one stalk a stork.
Filmed by Lauren O’Dea, the clip begins with a typical East African grassland scene – a white stork (Ciconia ciconia) pops into view and momentarily disappears again as it lowers its head to probe the ground for prey. Completely hidden in the tall grass, a leopard prepares to pounce. The cat breaks cover, but the stork is quick to react and takes to the air. And not a moment too soon. In a stunning display of leopardly flair, the cat launches after its prey, a swatting paw missing the bird by a feather.
Explosive hunts like this one are not uncommon for leopards. Small to medium-sized antelope are the norm, but the stealthy cats often use their agility and strength to tackle a wide variety of prey. Although this cat looks to be a male, recent research examining the prey preferences of leopards in Namibia suggests that females are the ones more likely to vary their diets and take on more “unusual” prey. “The females cannot specialise on certain prey species because the abundance of these prey species would decrease over time and access to them would become more difficult in their restricted home range when rearing cubs. They therefore need to feed on a wider range of, by necessity then smaller, prey species”, Jörg Melzheimer, ecologist at the Leibniz-IZW and initiator of the study told Eurekalert. Males have larger home ranges, thus more choice of what to eat, so they may be more likely to specialise on a relatively small number of prey species.