Leopard print?

Since we are bringing email thread together, let me pull in another one from last year that centred around a photo taken by Matthew Ling in Karura 25 September 2012. We'd love to get some more views. Here's the photo:

I put marks on his hand and sent the photo back to him for measurements to try to get an estimate of the size of the pug mark by ratio and proportions.  Matthew sent back the measurements (you can see them in the table below, under HAND).

There were a few other informal exchanges among a small group of Friends of Karura. I held off any Facebook announcement, fearing that we might put the wind up visitors, perhaps for a false alarm.

We then brought Zarek Cockar into the conversation. He trained with Mark Stavrakis, a 'Track & Sign Specialist Evaluator' under the Cybertracker Evaluation and Training System (http://www.cybertracker.org/tracking/evaluations), and sent me another tracking references that allowed me to get a range of leopard track estimates. So, we then had: Clive Walker (1992), Signs of the Wild and C & T Stuart (2000), A Field Guide to the Tracks and Signs of Southern and East African Wildlife, plus from Zarek, Louis Liebenberg's tracking cards (Liebenberg wrote The Art of Tracking: The Origin of Science. His website.

On 28 Aug 2014, at 17:34, Harvey Croze <hcroze@karurafriends.org> wrote to Zarek (a bit of waffle and then I get to the track):

And thanks for the links and fascinating references. Your material is certainly an improvement over Walker and the Stuarts. If you look at our FB discussion beast, the slender mongoose, Walker misses out the ‘heel’ detail entirely and the Stuarts’ little sketch could be anything.

I went, of course, to the cybertracker.org site, and found it most interesting. I downloaded Liebenberg’s 'The Art…' but haven’t read it yet. I note with relief from his introduction that he is personally against ’sport’ hunting. So look forward to how he develops the tracking-as-the-root-of-science thesis. 

I also downloaded the pdf of his track sketches in the hopes that it was a searchable version. His work, though basically excellent, suffers from not being indexed and the PDF not searchable. So I ran Adobe Acrobat X’s OCR routine on it, and now at least you can search for ‘slender’ and get to the right sketch. I’ll attach the OCR’d version, in case you’re interested.

The *.jpg cards with Liebenberg’s sketches and Ian Thomas’ field notes are also a great resource. The resolution on the ones you sent was a bit too low to generate a useful PDF binder. I wonder if we could scan the ones of Karura beasts a a higher resolution and make them available to visitors? As you can see from the bottom of our Ecology page on the website (http://www.friendsofkarura.org/the-karura-forest-researve/ecology-climate-soils-plants-animals/) we started hinting at the fascination of ID-ing tracks.

Finally, let me get your views on a track that a colleague from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre captured almost two years ago.

Here’s the photo with Matt Ling’s hand for scale. 

I put a series of reference points on his hand and sent the image back to him to measure the distances to get an estimate of the size of the print by ratios & proportions.

Here are the resultant numbers from the exercise earlier this year… [with a rough and ready new additions from Liebenberg’s sketches]

        HAND         PHOTO

AE = 85mm          77

BF = 95mm          91.5

CG = 83mm          85

CI = 95mm          106

AC = 45mm          42

EG = 45mm          48

HG = 70mm          76

HI = 65mm            69

                                             Clive Walker         Stuarts' Fnt     Stuarts’ Hind     Lieb’s Fnt  Lieb’s Hind
Pug L =  100.4       100             90                          70-90              80-100           75-100         90-95

Pug W = 77.5          80              65                         70-90               60-80             80-105        65-85

Photo Calculated Pug Ls = 110.4, 103.8, 97.6, 89.6; mean 100.4 (max range = 20.8)

Photo Calculated Pug Ws = 85.7, 75, 73.7, 75.7; mean 77.5       (max range = 12.0)

+++++++++++++

The sample is of course tiny, but even with the considerable range esp. for length (Matt, you sure about CG and CI?) the estimates are well within the leopard specs and well outside the specs for other wildlife candidates. A large dog is ruled out, we feel, by the complete absence of claw marks on what is a very clear print.

Now, given the uncertainty and variability in both the numbers as well as variation in nature of both individuals and substates, plus the fact that we don’t want to put the wind up visitors unnecessarily, we have kept the analysis to a very small group of people. I hope you will keep it to yourself for now. But please do give us your view on the owner of the print.

On 29 Aug 2014, at 08:55, Zarek Cockar <zarekcockar@gmail.com> wrote:

Onto the tracks in the photos.... 

 - The first track (with the full hand showing) looks like quite a young female leopard to me.  Elongated oval toes pressed closely together, with no claw marks. I can't really see the back pad to see if there are the characteristic feline 3 lobes, but that's basically irrelevant with all the other evidence presented. Shape and size are wrong for a large Civet.  Toe shape and lack of claws is wrong for a dog or a hyena.  There really are no other predators with a track that size.  I would probably still stare at this for a few minutes, second-guessing myself, but I'm quite confident this is a leopard track.

- The second track from Chantal's email (with just the finger showing) looks to me more like a domestic dog.  The toes are a little more sickle-shaped like a hyena, but the whole track is quite symmetrical, unlike a hyena.  I also do see what I believe to be stubby claw marks.  I once got very excited right outside the sports club gate when I found some massive predator prints in the red dust on the road.  No claw marks because the surface was too hard and the murram grains too large.  I then looked up to see a woman walking her Great Dane 100m down the road.  I followed the tracks just be sure.  Sadly it was just the dog.  

I have long suspected that there are leopards in Karurua.  There's really no reason there wouldn't be.  There are enough gulleys and valleys away from the pathways and roads where they can take refuge during the day.  And I would think there's enough prey for them in the forest as well.  There may only be a couple of leopard.  Possibly only two, and they're both probably quite small, as you can see from that first track.  They'd be feeding on duikers, rats, mice, and maybe the odd bush-buck every once in a while, so they would never grow very large (their size is also affected by their habitat).  One track obviously isn't exactly 'conclusive evidence', but as you say, this is not the first one you've seen. 

The best time to start tracking is early morning before the walkers and dogs have had a chance to obscure things.  In the deeper forest you might need a torch to help show track definition better that early in the morning, before the sun is on the ground.  And your best bet for finding leopard tracks I suspect would be in the river valleys and on less-used game trails in thick bush.

All this has made me very excited.  I'll have to plan the schlep across town from Karen one day early in the morning to do some tracking.