Clouded leopard

Name and taxonomy

Edward Griffith described the species as Felis nebulosa in 1821. He worked from the skin of an animal brought alive from Guangdong in China to a London menagerie. The Latin nebulosa means cloudy, a likely reference to the coat pattern that also gives the English name. Brian Houghton Hodgson named a Nepalese specimen in 1841, and Robert Swinhoe named a Taiwanese skin in 1862. John Edward Gray created the genus Neofelis for all three in 1867.

A skin from Java, named Felis diardi by Georges Cuvier in 1823, was long treated as a subspecies. In 2006 it was recognised as a separate species, the Sunda clouded leopard of Borneo and Sumatra. The mainland species is now considered monotypic, with no accepted subspecies. Older lists gave a Taiwanese subspecies, brachyura, and a sub-Himalayan one, macrosceloides. Local names include the Chinese yun bao, cloud leopard, and the Thai seua lai mek, cloud-patterned tiger.

Evolution and relatives

The cat family began to diversify in Asia in the Miocene, about 14.45 to 8.38 million years ago by nuclear DNA. The clouded leopard is the sister group to all the other big cats of the Pantherinae. It split from the line that led to lions, tigers and leopards about 9.32 to 4.47 million years ago. Skull studies in the 1960s already placed it as a bridge between the big cats and the small cats.

Mainland cats reached Borneo and Sumatra over a land bridge that is now under the sea, probably in the Pleistocene. Rising and falling seas cut the island cats off, and hair samples show the two species parted about 2.0 to 0.93 million years ago. The clouded leopard has an ossified hyoid bone, so unlike lions and tigers it can purr. Its range of calls still sits closer to that of the big cats. Its long canines are thought to be a return to a sabre-toothed way of killing, with deep stabbing bites.

Appearance

The ground colour runs from dark grey through buff to pale yellow-brown. Big cloud-shaped blotches, darker inside and rimmed in black along their rear edges, cover the sides, and the largest sit on the shoulders. Black spots mark the head and the legs, the ears are black, and broken stripes run from the eyes and mouth back to the shoulders. The thick tail carries large paired spots that merge into rings. The muzzle is white, the irises are brownish yellow to grey-green, and the pupils close to vertical slits. Black clouded leopards occur but are rare.

The body is long and the legs short and stout, with broad paws. The hind legs are longer than the front legs, which helps the cat jump. The bones of the forearm are not fused, so the paws can rotate to grip a trunk. Head and body run 81 to 108 cm in males and 68.6 to 94 cm in females. The tail is 74 to 91 cm in a male and 61 to 82 cm in a female, almost as long as the body. Adults weigh 11.5 to 23 kg, and a big male comes close to the size of a small leopard.

The skull is long and low with strong crests for the jaw muscles. The upper canines measure 4 cm or more, about three times the width of their sockets. A wide gap behind them gives the teeth room, and the first premolar is often missing. The bite force at the canine tip has been measured at 544.3 newtons. Cubs are born with solid dark spots that turn into open clouds by about six months.

Habitat and range

The range runs from the Himalayan foothills of Nepal, Bhutan and northeast India through Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It continues south into Peninsular Malaysia and east into China south of the Yangtze. The cat is extinct in Singapore and Taiwan, and perhaps in Hainan and Vietnam. Nepal thought it had lost the species until animals turned up in 1987 and 1988. In India it lives in Sikkim, northern West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and the other northeastern states.

Dense primary evergreen forest is the main habitat. The cat also uses dry tropical forest, logged forest, secondary growth, tall grassland and mangrove swamp. Camera traps have caught it from 144 metres in Pakke Tiger Reserve to 3,720 m in Sikkim. In Langtang National Park in Nepal it was recorded between 1,823 and 3,498 m. In Thailand it lives in relatively open dry forest at Huai Kha Khaeng and closed forest at Khao Yai. It needs large areas of intact forest, which many parts of its range no longer have.

Diet and hunting

The clouded leopard is a strict carnivore that hunts alone. It stalks its prey or waits in ambush, then pounces and bites the nape until the animal dies. After a meal it climbs into a tree to rest and digest. It takes prey both on the ground and in the trees. Its powerful build and long canines suggest that it evolved to bring down fairly bulky hoofed animals.

In Thailand it has been seen to kill pig-tailed macaques, hog deer, brush-tailed porcupines, pangolins and ground squirrels. In China it takes muntjac and pheasants, and in India one killed a slow loris. Other recorded prey includes young sambar, mouse deer, bearded pigs, palm civets, langurs and proboscis monkeys. One male in Malaysia was photographed carrying a binturong, a heavy tree-dwelling civet. Fish remains have been found in its droppings, and near villages it kills goats, pigs, calves and poultry. It tears meat from a carcass by stabbing with its teeth and jerking its head back.

Behaviour and social life

The clouded leopard lives alone, and a pair seen together is probably a mating couple or a mother with cubs. Early accounts called it a rare, secretive, nocturnal tree-dweller of deep forest. Radio collars tell a more mixed story. Two collared cats in Thailand were active in 35 to 45 percent of daytime checks. That figure rose to 85 percent at dusk and 60 percent at night. They were quietest around midday and in the hours before dawn. Cats in northeast India moved most in the late evening after sunset.

It is one of the finest climbers among the cats. Captive animals climb down vertical trunks head first, walk upside down along branches and hang by their hind feet. They can jump more than 1.2 metres straight up. Trees serve mainly as resting places, and most travel and hunting happen on the ground. Time in trees may also keep the cat away from ground leeches and from tigers and leopards that would kill it.

Home ranges are known only from Thailand. At Phu Khieo two females held 25.7 and 22.9 square kilometres and two males 29.7 and 49.1. At Khao Yai a female used 39.4 square kilometres and a male 42, each with a core of about 2.9. Ranges of males and females overlap a great deal. Captive cats mark their ground by spraying urine, clawing trees, scraping and rubbing their heads on objects.

Communication and senses

Its calls include a short high meow and a loud crying call, both used to find another cat at a distance. A friendly meeting brings a prusten, a soft snorting puff that only tigers, snow leopards and jaguars also make. An angry cat growls low and hisses with bared teeth and a wrinkled nose. Wild animals climb to a high point to give a long moaning call that carries far. The call may serve to find a mate or to warn off a rival. It also mews and spits like other cats.

Like other cats it has keen night vision, sharp hearing and a good nose. Long whiskers on the muzzle feel the way through dark forest. Scent marks left by spraying, clawing and cheek rubbing probably tell other cats who holds a range and who is ready to breed.

Reproduction and life cycle

Almost everything known about mating comes from zoos. Both sexes first breed at about 26 months on average, within a range of 20 to 30 months. A female is in heat for about six days in a cycle of about 30 days. In the wild most mating happens between December and March, though it can occur all year. The pair mates many times over several days, and the male grips the female by the neck while she calls out. Males are so aggressive that in zoos they have often killed the female with a neck bite.

Zoos now raise a male and a female together from a few weeks old, so that a bond forms before they mature. Artificial insemination produced cubs in 1992, 2015 and 2017. Gestation lasts about 93 days, give or take six, within a reported range of 85 to 109 days. A litter holds one to five cubs, usually two or three. Cubs are born blind and weigh 140 to 280 grams. The eyes open at about 10 days, the cubs walk at about 20 days and climb at six weeks.

They start on meat at 7 to 10 weeks and are weaned at 10 to 14 weeks. By 10 weeks a cub can kill a chicken. The adult cloud pattern appears at about six months, and the young leave their mother at about 10 months. The male plays no part in raising them, and a female can breed every year. Wild cats are thought to live about 11 years, and a captive animal has reached 19.8.

Predators and threats

No animal hunts the clouded leopard for food. Tigers and leopards share much of its range and probably kill it as a competitor. That may be why it keeps to the trees and to the night where they live. People are the real predator, tracking the cat with dogs or poisoning it after it takes livestock. Zoo records show respiratory disease, maternal neglect and infections as the main killers of captive cubs.

Large-scale deforestation removes the intact forest the species needs. Poaching for the wildlife trade is the second threat. In four markets in Myanmar, surveys between 1991 and 2006 found 301 body parts from at least 279 clouded leopards. In Nepal 27 seizures between 1988 and 2020 held parts of at least 51 cats, and in 17 cases the traders were arrested. Skins are sold as decoration and clothing, teeth and bones go into traditional medicine, and live cubs enter the pet trade. Its fragmented populations are also more exposed to disease and disaster.

Population and conservation

The IUCN has listed the clouded leopard as Vulnerable since 2008. Fewer than 10,000 adults are thought to survive, no subpopulation holds more than 1,000, and numbers are falling. Camera-trap surveys find it far less often than the leopard. One survey in southern Thailand in 2016 found about 5.06 cats per 100 square kilometres in a protected core. A disturbed edge zone held 3.13. The Taiwan population is gone: the last skin was found in 1989, and cameras at more than 1,450 sites from 1997 to 2012 saw none.

The species sits on CITES Appendix I, which bans commercial trade, and it counts as Endangered under United States law. Hunting is banned in Bangladesh, China, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, though enforcement is weak in several of them. Zoos have kept the cat since the early 20th century, opened a studbook in the 1970s and began coordinated breeding in the 1980s. As of 2014, 64 institutions held clouded leopards. International Clouded Leopard Day has been marked on 4 August every year since 2018.

Relationship with humans

Few people ever see a wild clouded leopard, and it avoids villages. Where farms push into forest, it takes calves, goats, pigs and chickens, and villagers answer with poison. Its pelt is a status symbol for some men in Asia, and skins, claws, teeth and bones sell in markets from Myanmar to Cambodia. The cat has even appeared on the menus of expensive restaurants. The Taiwanese subspecies was hunted to extinction, partly to feed this trade.

Zoos struggled to breed the cat for decades because the males killed their mates. In 2011 keepers at Nashville Zoo hand-raised three cubs that each weighed 0.23 kilograms at birth. Four more cubs arrived there in 2012 and four at Point Defiance Zoo in 2015. Meghalaya, a state in India, names it as its state animal. It is not a danger to people, and no attacks on humans appear on record.

In culture and myth

The Rukai people of Taiwan hold the clouded leopard sacred, because their ancestors followed one to the land they settled. For the Rukai, hunting the cat is taboo. Among the Paiwan people, only the nobility could wear its pelt. Both peoples tell how the clouded leopard and the black bear started out white, then painted one another. The leopard took care over the bear's coat, but the bear daubed the leopard. In return the leopard still sets aside part of every kill for the bear. Before Christianity reached Taiwan's hill peoples, the skin was used in ceremonies and the hunter who took one was a hero.

In China the cat is yun bao, the cloud leopard, and in Thailand seua lai mek, the tiger with cloud markings. In the 1970s a print of Rama Samaraweera's painting Clouded leopard became a best-seller in the United States. Modern writers call the cat a living sabre-tooth, an image that probably owes more to its teeth than to any old story.