You’ve heard of the black panther—a melanistic model of sometimes rosette-covered, golden-furred leopard—however have you ever heard of a pink leopard? There haven’t been many sightings of uncommon “strawberry” leopards, however there have been a couple of encounters with these unusually lovely creatures in international locations like South Africa and India.
We nonetheless can’t recover from a sighting from 2012 and a phenomenal photograph of a male strawberry leopard taken by Deon De Villiers. De Villiers is a safari information and photographer primarily based in South Africa.
Nationwide Geographic reported that vacationers in South Africa’s Madikwe Sport Reserve had seen the distinctive pink leopard earlier than, nevertheless it wasn’t till De Villiers took a photograph of the animal and despatched it to some specialists to study extra concerning the leopard’s coloration that they actually understood how particular the animal is.
It’s attainable this pink leopard (and others prefer it) have erythrism, which causes irregular redness in an animal’s fur, plumage, or pores and skin.
In a throwback publish, De Villiers mentioned: “It’s been over seven years since this picture and story broke the information, and phrase of this extraordinary Strawberry Leopard went viral. Since that, I’ve seen pictures of solely three extra people with this distinctive color variation!”
One sighting in 2021 was within the Ranakpur area of India.
(Leopards stay in each Africa and Asia. They’re much like jaguars, which stay in Central and South America, with some vital variations.)
Try De Villiers’s photograph of a uncommon pink leopard in South Africa right here:
How wonderful would it not be to see this animal or one other prefer it within the wild?
