Over the past few years I've made a number of trips to the Bronx Zoo to photograph the animals there, and if I didn't know better I would swear that the melanistic leopards (Panthera pardus) in the"Jungle World" exhibit are statues. They're always asleep and I've never seen one so much as twitch, but then again, they're cats. When I first saw them I thought that they were melanistic jaguars (Panthera onca), but the faintly visible spot patterns and their more gracile features (especially the head) proved them to be leopards.
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I'm in love with that second picture! J and I were walking home one night from a restaurant and we saw a fat white cat straddling a cement railing like that. He was so funny. We took some pictures with our phones, but none of them came out. It's funny to see such a large graceful animal doing the same thing :)
I have a black cat at home and those pictures remind me of him sleeping! I'm sure he would sleep exactly like the kitty in that second photo if there was a tree branch handy.
Great pictures, as always! We have two melanistic jaguars at the Montgomery Zoo, they are definitely crowd favorites, and give the opportuntiy for some genetics education for the public as well.
It's one of the Rules of Cats, you know:
4. You must be capable of sleeping 23 1/2 hours a day.
Cats have two major talents. The first is fooling us into thinking they're independents who deign to dwell with us. The second is being able to sleep almost anywhere without discomfort.
My girlfriend and I visited the Bronx Zoo this summer. I made a short video of our trip, which is probably of no interest to anyone here. I'm only posting it because when we were there, these large cats were up and pacing about. Proof that they aren't statues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E34j0cV_3hg