Their iconic spotted coat has been admired and coveted by humans for millennia.
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It turns out that while leopards can not change their spots, rare species of black leopards in the Malay Peninsula are actually concealing them.
It is not known why the leopards in this part of the world are mostly black, but Laurance said it was likely to better camouflage the animals in the dark rainforest.
While most leopards possess a distinctive and easily-visible pattern of spots, research published in 2010 found that almost all Malay leopards possess have the gene for melanism, or black coats.
Using the infrared setting on a camera, researchers saw that black leopards have two different colors of fur coat, with the other shade creating patters or spots that can only be seen with the modified camera setting. “This new approach gives us a novel tool to help save this unique and endangered animal”. They used infrared illumination to make the discovery.
“Most automatic cameras have an infrared flash, but it’s only activated at night”, explains Gopalasamy Reuben Clements of James Cook University in Australia. Scientists blocked the camera’s light sensor thereby tricking the camera to believe that it was night thereby forcing the infrared flash to become active.
As per Professor William Laurance from James Cook University, decline in population of black leopards is greatly because of poaching on large scale. According to lead author Laurie Hedges, zoology graduate from the University of Nottingham, “Understanding how leopards are faring in an increasingly human-dominated world is vital”.
The researchers tested the technique in the Kenyir wildlife corridor in north-eastern Peninsular Malaysia. Because of their seemingly uniform coat, these animals are hard to track or tell apart.
Using the camera technique, they were able to identify 94 percent of the animals photographed by the camera traps, they say.
Clements adds that this can allow the team to examine them and monitor them over time which is pivotal for their conservation.
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Ahimsa Campos Arceiz, from the School of Geography at UNMC, said: “Some places in Peninsular Malaysia where I have used automatic cameras have lots of prey and forest cover but evidently very few leopards”. Wildlife trafficking usually involves skin and body parts of leopards that are traded between the Myanmar and China border, researchers say.
