This is a photo of the vomit of a leopard which has been eating some grass. Several carnivores often eat grass to aid digestion or something. I got clearer photos of this later in the day as I was climbing back down but by then the saliva had dried. Which is what makes this photo very interesting. The huge blobs of wet saliva you see in the photo indicate that the leopard was here very recently.
Though at the time I estimated that we had missed the leopard by a couple of hours, analyzing the photo now, I feel that the time lapse was much much lesser!! The false sense of security we had definitely did help us climb as we were out of breath by this time even without any fear of the leopard.
4 comments:
Dear Vikram. i think your previous analysis is correct. it looks like about 1-2 hours only. as it looks to have grassy undergrowth you will not find any pug marks there but maybe you can look for broken lines of grass and find out. you can also look for smell in the area. if it is very recent the smell is very strong. specially in windy spots like savandurga the it looses smell fast
:) My use of the word 'analyzing' is probably misleading. It suggests a thought process far more complex than what my mind engages in when I say that it must have been less than two hours. Both figures are perhaps at best guesstimates. I didn't look for pug marks etc. and didn't detect any strong odour either.
Thanks for the comment.
Hi Vikram. You know i was there too when you took this pic but do you remmeber we spotted few dogs in the same place while we were trekking. I dont mean to say there was no leopard for even i did bliv ther could have been one when the security guard who came with us asserted that it was done by a leopard but why do u think the dogs would not have done it?
Vanakkam. I've never seen a dog vomit this much. The grass regurgitated by dog is a very small clump compared to this. I'll show you some on campus sometime. Lets go on one of these treks again. It's been a long time.
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