What Sounds Do Black Leopards Make? | The Lion Whisperer

as i say it's not a it's not an episode on licking on taste it's an episode on these things look at these things all right good morning everyone today i'm going to be doing another installment of the sense and sensibilities series um it's going to be on leopard hearing so i'm on my way to your favorite leopards khan and duke oh boy guys it's gonna be what has been one of these days just when you think it can't go wrong i've been sitting here for 15 minutes with the leopards explaining all these wonderful things about leopard hearing and i didn't push record so [Laughter] so i've got absolutely zero and i'm gonna have to start again this is a leopard episode it's a leopard episode on their sense of hearing and i'm here with jukan khan and normally they are pretty good at demonstrating uh everything i wanted to get some of the greeting sounds i did get them greeting me when i came in but unfortunately i didn't roll on that either the sound that they make this friendly sound it's quite a soft sound but it's also known as a leopard meow like a domestic cat meow but kind of like a leopard meow it's not a meow like a cat it's more of a hope that's a good demo so i call them either like that or a whistle i go and they know that sound and their corn is listening and seeing if there's anything that's going to come look at the ears pointed back is there anything that's going to come from the whistling cave are you going to give us some food what's going to be the story but juko's been a real good boy oh sorry my geeky boy sorry boy didn't mean to scare you so we're going to try and talk to dukie and talk about these wonderful little things attached to his head and how brilliant they are and as you can see well there's what i will be talking about just now that's called the ear flap and that ear flap is thought to channel the sound waves into the ear now leopards here in the ultrasound frequency range and that is up to 65 000 hertz while he demonstrates his claw cleaning and he's listening leopards will like every other animal like humans will use their senses in combination they're never using their senses in isolation so he's sniffing he's looking he's hearing and that is exactly what he's doing now if you ever look at what he's doing he's looking those ears are working over time he's still listening to me every time i say something of a certain pitch those ears turn back and you can see if i talk too much dukie is like looks at me as if to say okay kev enough is enough if you're not going to give me anything then really what are you doing here he's just marking but uh so those ears are filled with little tiny sensitive hairs and those tiny sensitive hairs are super sensitive obviously to to what they're designed to detect which is sound you hear that sound guys oh yeah such small little ears how do you hear so well out of those finely tuned little instruments bless you so can leopards raw that's a question that always gets asked and the answer is yes they do raw it's in a leopard form of a raw it's not like a lion with [Music] but they make a sound that's likened to a saw sawing through very hard wood and in fact people refer to it as leopard sawing so it's a very distinctive sound when you hear it in the wild you'll never forget it it's a very infrequently made sound and and it goes something like this [Music] how is that for an impression huh duke [Laughter] duke says i am bored and i'm going to bed it's too hot they will soar when they are confident in their territories and they are trying to ward off uh intruder mail or let another male know that he is infringing and then there could be a even a reciprocal raw from a an intruding male or adjoining territorial male and then they would know exactly where um each other are and they would avoid two territorial males walking within a territory actually will utter what's known as a cough it's almost like a and so if you can imagine the one leopard walking along his territorial bounds coughing and then the other one saying here i am oh and if you actually look at the waveform of of these coughs they're very uh dynamic and variable and it's almost like a what's thought to be like a communication between the two um very similar if you look at the waveform to that of human language so i don't want to read too deeply into that but this is what i've seen from the research i've done which i found quite fascinating is that there's obviously more to this communication than meets the eye so we all we as humans here is a is a cough but perhaps to the leopards there's so much more meaning to those coughs there's little inferences and little tonal shifts and changes that allow the other leopard to understand exactly what this cat is saying as an airplane flies over you can just hear or see those ears pinpointing that airplane flying over must be exceptionally loud for an animal with such good hearing okay guys so as the temperatures start to soar obviously the leopards um are sleeping in the shade it's just uh lifted his head now but the interesting thing that i wanted to um just let you know is that even when these leopards are sleeping so even when they're flat out on their their backs or they totally out cold sleeping you'll always see the ears still doing this just scanning the environment kind of listening for sounds and listening for any sound that's of concern listening for any sound that may be of interest maybe potential prey so even though they're sleeping they are still on high alert and so they're never fully in a deep deep sleep like like we are as human sometimes sometimes you do catch them them napping um every now and again i've been able to sneak up on them without them uh detecting me coming but most of the time you're not gonna you're not gonna catch them unawares because those ears are always just listening and it's almost in the you know in the subconscious they've kind of or tuned in to the environment so it's really interesting to to see that and it's it's not different to any of the other predators so it's not uniquely a leopard thing um it's just always interesting now that we're talking about the hearing to know that these animals can't afford to really switch off completely we as humans nowadays are living in probably the safest times that we've ever experienced so we generally don't go to sleep with one eye open we you know kind of are more relaxed we come to our homes where we feel safe and secure and we generally enjoy a good night's sleep wasn't the case i can assure you for our ancestors who probably also used to have to sleep with one eye open and an ear always pricked all right guys so because duke and khan are such good sports i'm going to give them their favorite thing in the whole world pilchards and tomato sauce yo you're hungry huh i don't know what corn is that's the poor coming heart wanting the wanting the food can number two okay okay yesterday greedy cats one thing is incredible with these leopards [Music] is how they will fight each other the food but they'll eat it out my hands [Music] such a cool cat yeah thanks for watching and until next time on lion whisperer tv from myself and corn and duke bye [Music] you

Channel: The Lion Whisperer

Views: 394,704

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Id: _ayn7bP1-yQ

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 09 2021