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Leopard attack
Leopard attacks on humans are generally rare occurrences. Despite the leopard's (''Panthera pardus'') extensive range from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, attacks are regularly reported only in India and Nepal. Among the five "big cats", leopards are less likely to become man-eaters—only jaguars and snow leopards have a less fearsome reputation. However, leopards are established predators of non-human primates, sometimes preying on species as large as the western lowland gorilla. Other primates may make up 80% of the leopard's diet. While leopards generally avoid humans, they tolerate proximity to humans better than lions and tigers and often come into conflict with humans when raiding livestock.
Leopard attacks may have peaked in India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coinciding with rapid urbanization.〔 Attacks in India are still relatively common, and in some regions of the country leopards kill more humans than all other large carnivores combined. The Indian states of Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal experience the most severe human–leopard conflict. In Nepal, most attacks occur in the midland regions (the Terai, midhills, and lesser Himalaya).〔 One study concluded that the rate of leopard predation on humans in Nepal is 16 times higher than anywhere else, resulting in approximately 1.9 human deaths annually per million inhabitants.〔 In the former Soviet Central Asia, leopard attacks have been reported in the Caucasus, Turkmenia (present day Turkmenistan), and the Lankaran region of present-day Azerbaijan.〔 Heptner, V.G.; and Sluskii, A.A. Mammals of the Soviet Union. Vol 2, Part 2. (Carnivores: Hyaenas and Cats) New Delhi: Amerind Publishing; 1992. p269-271.〕 Rare attacks have occurred in China.〔 Heptner, V.G.; and Sluskii, A.A. Mammals of the Soviet Union. Vol 2, Part 2. (Carnivores: Hyaenas and Cats) New Delhi: Amerind Publishing; 1992. p269.〕
It is possible for humans to win a fight with a leopard, as in the case of a 56-year-old woman who killed an attacking leopard with a sickle and spade, and survived with heavy injuries, and the case of a 73-year-old man in Kenya who fatally tore the tongue out of a leopard.〔http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/Man-rips-leopards-tongue-out-20050622〕 Globally, attacks on humans—especially nonfatal attacks that result in only minor injury—likely remain under-reported due to the lack of monitoring programs and standardized reporting protocol.
== Leopard predation on hominids ==
In 1970, South African paleontologist C. K. Brain showed that a juvenile ''Paranthropus robustus'' individual, SK 54, had been killed by a leopard at Swartkrans in Gauteng, South Africa approximately 1.8 million years ago. The SK 54 cranium bears two holes in the back of the skull—holes that perfectly match the width and spacing of lower leopard canine teeth. The leopard appears to have dragged its kill into a tree to eat in seclusion, much like leopards do today.〔 Numerous leopard fossils have been found at the site, suggesting that the felids were predators of early hominids. The revelation that these injuries were not the result of interpersonal aggression but were leopard-inflicted dealt a fatal blow to the then-popular killer ape theory. Another hominid fossil consisting of a 6-million-year-old ''Orrorin tugenensis'' femur (BAR 1003'00), recovered from the Tugen Hills in Kenya, preserves puncture damage tentatively identified as leopard bite marks. This fossil evidence, along with modern studies of primate–leopard interaction, has fueled speculation that leopard predation played a major role in primate evolution, particularly on cognitive development.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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