The Far Eastern leopardess Alexa has recently been caught on camera trapss at Land of the Leopard National Park with an unknown leopard. She has never been spotted with a male leopard before.

The photos show the leopardess together with the male. The big cats never come close to each other, except, as a rule, when adult leopards meet to procreate. The experts instantly recognised Alexa’s distinct scar. However, they failed to identify the male leopard, so he will get his own ID number soon.

“It clearly is an adult male, but our camera traps have never spotted him before,” said Pyotr Sonin, a senior researcher at Vorontsov Land of the Leopard National Park. “There is a chance that he came to the national park from China, as Leo 27F’s range is not far from the Russian-Chinese border.”

If the spotted predator has ever been caught on cameras in China, Russian researchers will learn about him from their Chinese counterparts.

Alexa was first identified in the national park in 2013. At the end of 2014, she managed to cross into China, where she was seriously injured by a metal loop in a trap set by poachers. Experts believed the leopardess to be doomed; however, in early 2016, she emerged in front of cameras followed by two cubs. In May 2018, Land of the Leopard employees retrieved camera trap photos of Alexa with yet another cub of hers.