Dina Matyukhina, research associate at Leopard Land National Park, spoke about the life of Amur tigers and leopards in the park.

Question: Dina, what are relations like within families of Amur tigers and leopards? For instance, do cubs stay in Leopard Land national park? The park covers a vast territory. Do they all remain there or do they choose to leave for other places?

Dina Matyukhina: We can track this using trail cameras. For example, one year we received a photo of a female with cubs (both cubs and adult animals are identified by spots on their fur). If they are later spotted separately by other cameras (which means that they already live independently from their mother and are separated by a certain distance), we can track what happens to them later on.

Leopards live in a very confined area in the south-western part of the Primorye Territory, where there are small areas with a suitable habitat. Although leopards are able to adapt to various environments (they can inhabit low-yielding scrubs with sparse oaks), the area of all habitats is constrained. It is possible that some young leopards leave for China. There is no doubt that they actively seek to establish their home range, but finding sparsely populated areas is very difficult, since the overall territory is limited. It turns out that there are man-altered lands (cropland, dense road networks and populated areas) to the north and northeast of the leopard’s main habitat. Animals just can’t go there. Leopards heading towards China are likely to remain in the frontier zone, since it gets worse in China where population density and disturbance levels are even higher. For this reason, there is a substantial overlap between the home ranges of the leopards. They have to get along with one another. While tigers establish and maintain exclusive home ranges, if the territory is big enough and there is enough prey (the overlap is insignificant), leopards’ home ranges are mixed, and they have to live in close proximity with one another.

Question: And they manage to live that way?

Dina Matyukhina: They do. They are surprisingly tolerant of one another, managing to live and propagate in such a constrained environment.

The fact that inbreeding, or consanguineous mating, may occur is another matter. This is a problem. The last time the issue of inbreeding and genetic depression in the leopard population was raised was when animal photographer Valery Maleyev took a picture of a wild leopard in Leopard Land. The photo showed a leopard with white paws. We began looking into this issue. We have access to a relatively large image database for Far East leopards taken by trail cameras. It turned out that most wild leopards do not have such an attribute. What this means is that a recessive, weaker gene showed up. Consanguineous mating increases the incidence rate for such genes.

Question: Is there anything that can be done in this respect?

Dina Matyukhina: It’s hard to say. Introducing leopards, and therefore new genes, could be a solution, but such decisions are taken by expert groups on the national level.

Question: How many cubs can an animal have? Does the female care for the newborns only, or does the male as well?

Dina Matyukhina: In most solitary cat species only the female cares for the progeny. Amur tigers can have three or four cubs. For example, our colleagues from the Wildlife Conservation Society managed to take a photograph with three cubs in a single frame. This image was assessed very highly at an international BBC contest.

Question: How much time do mothers spend with their cubs?

Dina Matyukhina: We have seen cases in which there were tracks of two cubs along those of their mother, but not more. Naturally, both tiger and leopard cubs spend their first several months in the den, but when they reach the age of three to four months, their mother starts taking them hunting. For this, she returns to the den after a successful hunt to take the cubs to see the prey.

Families usually break up when the cubs reach the age of two: males go off far away searching for a place to establish their home range. Life is actually hard for young males, since as they search for a place to settle they face the possibility of encountering adult males who already occupy a certain territory, which can lead to conflict, forcing these animals to go further. Female Amur tigers (I don’t know about leopards, since this issue has not been studied so far) leave a part of their territory to their daughters, so they share their range with female cubs, while male progeny have to go far away.

Question: If you were to draw a parallel between leopards and tigers, what would you say are their main characteristics? How do they compare?

Dina Matyukhina: Tigers are probably more relaxed. As a species, they consider themselves the master, although they do seek to avoid direct human contact. I’m sure that when working in the woods I was often very close to tigers, but could not see them, since they seek to avoid conflict. They see or hear a human approaching well in advance and try to either leave or hide. There have been cases when tigers were dismissive towards humans and did not leave or hide when seeing a human. They can observe humans or follow them out of curiosity. There were many cases when a researcher would return to his or her tracks to find that a tiger had been following.

Leopards are more secretive and cautious animals. They are rarely, if ever, seen in the wild. Having highly developed hearing and eyesight, they tend to disappear when they sense a human approaching.

Tigers and leopards also occupy different and specific microreliefs. Tigers prefer river valleys and plateau-like areas, while leopards opt for rocky cliffs or narrow crests with steep slopes. Tigers can also venture into such areas, but they are still regarded as an environment of choice for the leopard.

Leopards are not aggressive towards humans. They are very fearful and cautious, so cautious that they never enter into conflict.

The tiger is different. If you stumble upon a tiger in the woods, for instance during strong wind or rain, when the animal is unable to sense human presence, the response of the animal is unpredictable. If the animal is wounded or sick, or if it’s a female with cubs, and the human inadvertently approaches the den, chances of being attacked by the tiger are very high. No such cases have been reported with the leopard.

Question: And what do they do with their prey? Do they act the same or differently? How do they attack and eat their prey?

Dina Matyukhina: The tiger and the leopard use the same hunting tactics: stalking as close to the prey as possible so that it can be reached in a single leap. They are sprinters and have relatively little stamina, so they are unable to pursue their quarry for a long time. They creep as close as possible and pounce on the animal. If they are unable to catch up with their prey within 100 metres, they abandon the hunt.

Usually, the prey is killed by strangling: it is caught by the neck. In most cases, when we found the remains of prey killed by a tiger or a leopard, such animals had traces of bites on the neck and broken neck bones. In general, both tigers and leopards kill their prey that way.