Here's a tweet from Mohammad Farhadinia asking you to spot the Persian leopard (Panthera pardus tulliana; I had no idea that "African" leopards were in Asia, which shows how ignorant I am). I'll put a bigger picture below, and the answer will go up at noon Chicago time.
Can you see it? (Click to enlarge.) I would rate this one "medium difficulty".
This entry was written by whyevolutionistrue and posted on January 21, 2018 at 8:50 am and filed under felids, spot the nightjar (and other beasts), spot the ________. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.	Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
I call that one pretty easy.
When I was in Kenya, a leopard was lounging on a cliff, everyone around me where taking pictures and I couldn't see him. they blend in well.
I had no idea there were so many subspecies or that Panthera pardus was spread over such a large area.
And out of curiosity about why the P.p. japonensis was only shown on the map in northern China, I did a quick wiki-peek at P.p. japonensis only to find it was recently under review and subsumed to P. p. orientalis, with on site claiming an approximate population size of less than 350. So, I wonder at the validity of the multiple subspecies and worry that in a few years it won't matter much anyway.
Especially surprising (to me, anyway) that there are any on the Arabian peninsula.
I was shocked by that as well, but not shocked by what Wikipedia has to say about this subspecies: critically endangered according to the IUCN, fewer than 200 estimated in the wild as of 2006, small populations in fragmented territories, 74 known captive animals in zoos. I imagine that the tiny population that was in Yemen, some of which were collected for the breeding program, are nonexistent what with the violence and turmoil.
Not at all hard on the enlarged pic. Ssp tulliana doesn't appear on the range map, is it also known as P p saxicolor? And I'm staggered at how fragmented the species' range is.
Easy to find when you know to look for it, but still remarkably camouflaged! The range distribution is fascinating. I'd be interested in knowing more about Mr. Farhadinia's work.
Much easier than those katydids.