(Goddard, Kan.) —
The clouded leopard, the smallest of all the big cats, is on display at the Tanganyika Wildlife Park for the next few months. This small leopard weighs about one pound right now at a moth and a half old but can grow up to 65 pounds.
Matt Fouts from Tanganyika says these leopards get no bigger than a large dog and their small size helps them hang from trees and sneak up on monkeys or birds.
“They’re specialty is, primarily, [they’re] considered arboreal, which means they live or spend a lot of time in the trees. They’re excellent climbers,” says Fouts.
Fouts estimates there about 500 of these leopards in the world and he says Tanganyika has the largest collection of clouded leopards in the US. These cats are difficult to breed and Fouts says Tanganyika is the only facility where a baby clouded leopard has been born every for the last eight or nine years.
“So we have essentially increased their captive worldwide population by 10 percent in the last nine years. Which that’s huge for conservation,” says Fouts.
You can see the baby clouded leopard at Tanganyika or you can watch him on the live steam on our website.
