Clouded Leopard
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- Scientific Name : Neofelis nebulosa
- IUCN Status : Vulnerable
- The clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) also called the mainland clouded leopard, is a wild cat inhabiting dense forests from the foothills of the Himalayas through mainland Southeast Asia into South China.
- It has large dusky-grey blotches and irregular spots and stripes reminiscent of clouds.
- Its head-and-body length ranges from 68.6 to 108 cm (27.0 to 42.5 in) with a 61 to 91 cm (24 to 3
- Its skull is long and low with strong occipital and sagittal crests.
- 6 in) long tail
- It uses its tail for balancing when moving in trees and is able to climb down vertical tree trunks head first.
- It rests in trees during the day and hunts by night on the forest floor.
- The clouded leopard is the first cat that genetically diverged 9.32 to 4.47 million years ago from the common ancestor of the pantherine cats.
- The clouded leopard’s fur is of a dark grey or ochreous ground-color, often largely obliterated by black and dark dusky-grey blotched pattern.
- The canine teeth are exceptionally long, the upper being about three times as long as the basal width of the socket.
- The clouded leopard occurs from the Himalayan foothills in Nepal, Bhutan and India to Myanmar, south-eastern Bangladesh, Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, to south of the Yangtze River in China. It is regionally extinct in Singapore and Taiwan.
- In India, it occurs in Sikkim, northern West Bengal, Meghalaya subtropical forests, Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh