The oldest known wild clouded leopard – a female – captured on camera trap in Malaysian Borneo. This individual is estimated to have been 8.5 years old – Credit: Panthera, Sabah Forestry Department, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research
Newly released camera trap footage from a recent study captures the oldest Sunda clouded leopard ever recorded in the wild.
This 8.5-year-old female in Borneo’s rainforests offers a new and exciting glimpse into the life of one of the world’s most elusive wild cats.
The research is the first to document a female’s lifespan in the wild, and the data also confirmed that these leopards are far more mobile than previously assumed, with some individuals traveling up to 19 miles between forest reserves.
It also found that females were 68% harder to detect than males. Camera trap data demonstrates why: females spend far more time in the trees, and their slender bodies and fluffier tails help them balance there.
Males, by contrast, spend much of their time on the ground patrolling and re-marking territory, which is why they turn up on camera more often.
Found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the Sunda clouded leopard is known as a ghost of the forest, is rarely seen, and also carries the largest canine teeth of any wild cat relative to body size, drawing comparisons to saber-toothed cats.
OUT OF THE SHADOWS:
The study’s dataset was made possible by the indigenous communities of Sabah, in partnership with the forestry and wildlife departments of Sabah state, who serve as wildlife rangers and community engagement officers for Panthera, the wild cat-dedicated conservation organization who conducted the study.
Patrolling dense terrain, running camera trap networks, and acting as frontline guardians against poachers. That partnership began in 2020 through work on human-elephant conflict, and grew into community reporting of illegal logging and, eventually, government-funded ranger stipends.
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