THE LEOPARD AND THE CHEETAH 233 



instances a leopard does not attack animals bigger than a 

 half-grown waterbuck, hartebeest or zebra. Unlike wolves 

 and dogs, which usually snap at the flanks and hams of 

 their prey, the leopard, like the lion, tiger, jaguar, and 

 puma, ordinarily kills by bites in the head, neck, or throat. 

 It will kill a serval or jackal, and is itself, although very 

 rarely, killed by the lion and crocodile; and it has been 

 known to go up a tree to avoid wild dogs. With the hyenas 

 it lives in a state of partial feud. Neither preys on the 

 other, unless that other is sick or crippled; and a single 

 hyena dares not meddle with a leopard. But two or three 

 will attack a leopard and drive it from its just killed prey. 

 Sir Alfred Pease once saw a leopard leap over the thorn 

 fence surrounding a Somali encampment, seize a sheep, and 

 leap back with it over the fence, only to be at once robbed 

 of its booty by the hyenas outside, which cackled, yelled, 

 and laughed like so many ghouls as they devoured the spoil 

 they had stolen from the stealer. It is undoubtedly because 

 of the hyenas that the leopard is so apt to hang its prey in 

 the branches of a tree. The strength shown in carrying the 

 prey up the tree is astonishing. Once on the Guaso Nyiro 

 we found half the carcass of a big Grevy zebra colt which 

 had thus been dragged into a thorn-tree. The attack is 

 always made by a sudden rush from ambush on the sur- 

 prised quarry; occasionally the leopard lies in wait, but more 

 often it prowls about and stalks its quarry when seen or 

 scented, the approach being a marvel of slinking and noise- 

 less stealth. 



The leopard is a bold marauder against man, killing the 

 calves, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs, and chickens of any village 

 which it visits, and sometimes breaking into the building 



