Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook Columbia Gazetteer American Heritage Coll. It is commonly yellow, buff, or gray, patterned with black spots and rings. The rings, unlike those of the New World jaguar , never have spots inside them. Black leopards are commonly called panthers, a name sometimes used for all leopards. They are not a distinct species but merely a color variant caused by melanism, or excessive pigmentation.
Close inspection reveals the typical spotting, which is obscured by the darkness of the background.
They prey mostly on small animals such as monkeys, rodents, and birds. Leopards are found in much of Africa south of the Sahara and in parts of Asia from Israel to Korea and Indonesia. They are listed as threatened or endangered throughout their range, owing primarily to loss of their natural habitat and to illegal killing for Oriental folk medicine. 2 A closely related species is the snow leopard, or ounce, P. uncia, which replaces ordinary leopards in the high mountains of Central Asia. It has long whitish fur and diffuse spotting.