Leopards are usually a light tan colour with a patterned coat and a long tail. They have a large skull and massive jaw muscles. Some leopards are completely black and are known as panthers. They can be born in the same litter as normally marked cats.
Leopards live in the open savannah, forests, jungles, cold mountainous regions and even on the outskirts of cities!
Leopards prey on a variety of animals including antelopes, monkeys, jackals, impala, insects,
wildebeest, rodents, hares, peacocks, snakes, sheep and goats.
Leopards often take whatever they catch to eat up into the safety of tree branches, to avoid the attention of hyenas and lions. They are incredibly strong and are capable of lifting animals three times their own body weight. They can live without water for long periods of time.
Leopards like to live alone. They are very defensive of their territory and urinate around the boundaries of their territories to warn off intruders. They are most active between sunset and sunrise.
Tigers are the largest of the cat family. They have thick black vertical stripes covering an orange body. No two tigers have the same stripe pattern - each is unique, like human fingerprints.
Tigers' favourite place to live is forests although they can also be found in grassland and the edges of swamp. Their main prey are large animals such as deer, buffalo and wild pigs, but they will also hunt fish, monkeys, birds, reptiles and sometimes even baby elephants. Occasionally, tigers kill leopards, bears and other tigers. Tigers stalk and ambush their prey. They use dense covering to hide themselves and sneak up on their prey. When the tiger is close enough it suddenly rushes at its prey and kills it by grabbing the throat or the neck. Tigers like to live and hunt alone, although they may sometimes come together to share a kill. Unlike most other cats, tigers are fond of water and are strong swimmers.
Tigers usually live between 8 – 10 years in the wild.
The Asian water buffalo is 5 to 6.2 feet (1.5 to 1.9 meters) tall at the shoulder, and weighs over 2500 pounds.
They have thin grey-black coats, and carry enormous backward-curving, crescent-shaped horns stretching close to 5 feet (1.5 meters) long with deep ridges on their surface.
Water buffalo spend much of their day submerged in the muddy waters of tropical and subtropical forests. Their wide-splayed hoofs prevent them from sinking too deeply in the mud. Marshes provide good cover and rich water plants to eat, although water buffalo actually prefer to feed in grasslands on grass and herbs.
Water buffalo have been domesticated for more than 5,000 years. They have provided people with their meat, horns, hides, milk, butterfat, and power (through ploughing fields and transporting people.) Wild water buffalo are endangered.
The great one horned rhinoceros lives mainly in northern India and Nepal. These massive beasts have a segmented hide that looks like a thick coat of natural body armour. It functions a bit like one also: Flexible skin between the thicker hide "plates" allows them to shift as the rhinoceros moves. Rhinos found in Nepal have only one horn. Like other rhinos, these animals have sharp hearing and a keen sense of smell. They may find one another by following the trail of scent each enormous animal leaves behind it on the landscape. A rhino can move very quickly when aroused. Their charges have been clocked at 30 miles (48 kilometers) an hour. Rhinos are grazers - they grasp tall grasses with their lips. In addition to grass, rhinos eat fruit, leaves, water plants and sometimes farm crops. When the sun is high and it is hot, they often wallow or submerge themselves in water. Rhinos typically live to about 40 years old in the wild.
