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Concept
Arabian leopard
Summary
The Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) is a leopard subspecies native to the Arabian Peninsula. It has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1996 as fewer than 200 wild individuals were estimated to be alive in 2006. The population is severely fragmented. Subpopulations are isolated and not larger than 50 mature individuals. The population is thought to decline continuously.
The Arabian leopard is the smallest leopard subspecies. It was tentatively affirmed as a distinct subspecies by genetic analysis of a single wild leopard from South Arabia, which appeared most closely related to the African leopard.
Felis pardus nimr was the scientific name proposed by Wilhelm Hemprich and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg in 1830 for a leopard from Arabia. Panthera pardus jarvisi, proposed by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1932, was based on a leopard skin from the Sinai Peninsula.
In the early 1990s, a phylogeographic analysis was carried out based on tissue samples from Asian and African leopards. P. p. jarvisi was provisionally grouped with the Persian leopard, as tissue samples were not available. Molecular biologists tentatively proposed in 2001 to group the Sinai leopard with P. p. nimr, as again tissue samples were not available.
The Arabian leopard's fur varies from pale yellow to deep golden, tawny or grey and is patterned with rosettes. Males have a total length of including long tails and weigh about ; females are long including long tails and weigh around . The Arabian leopard is smaller than both African and Persian leopards.
It is however the largest cat in the Arabian Peninsula.
The geographic range of the Arabian leopard is poorly understood but generally considered to be limited to the Arabian Peninsula, including Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. It lives in mountainous uplands and hilly steppes, but seldom moves to open plains, desert or coastal lowlands. It prefers well-vegetated terrain that is difficult for humans to reach. Since the late 1990s, leopards were not recorded in Egypt.
Official source
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