Pawing Along With The Amur Leopard

          And we are back on this ‘Threatened Cat’ Thursday with ‘tails’ of the Amur Leopard.  Remember, we left a lot of you wondering- how long have the Amur Leopards been around?

          Meow-meow I know, I know- who cares?  I do-MOL…well, sort of….

          Personally, I think tracing origins of cats is extremely interesting bepaws there are so many out there and so many have been lost!  Okay, this isn’t a surprise- there isn’t that much history on the Amur Leopard.  Let’s note that at one point they seemed to be prevalent in not just Russia but Korea and China too.  If you really stop and think about it- you can pretty much figure out why they got to this point.  Amur Leopards all over Russia probably fell in the same boat as Caspian Tigers.  In other words, they were over-hunted.  To put it mildly, the TRIGGER-HAPPY HUMANS COULDN’T STOP.  As for the Chinese and North Korean ones, poaching is an easy guess but remember I’m just throwing it out there-which brings this up…

          Why is one just ‘over-hunted’ and the other ‘poached?’ Isn’t it the same thing?  Not necessarily, one section could’ve had the go-ahead by a government while the others realized that this animal was a cash cow.   Of course, that ancient Chinese medicine comes into play.

          Speaking of that, is anything or anyone ever going to stop that?  I mean won’t anyone with any juice just say KNOCK IT OFF- ALL OF THE ANIMALS WIILL BE GONE!  Nah- of course they won’t, there’s too much cash floating out there. 

          Pawing back to the Amur Leopard here we have an animal that’s to the point of being so rare that people who make documentaries about Russia are shocked when they come into view.  And with that- we’ll growl with you next week!!