Scientists from India and Norway, in a collaborative research study on leopard attacks in Himachal Pradesh, have found that attacks were seasonal in nature following people’s activities associated with the changing agricultural seasonal landscape, rather than just one problematic leopard causing attacks.
In the study titled ‘Examining leopard attacks: Spatio-temporal clustering of human injuries and deaths in Western Himalayas, India’, the team of scientists, including those from Bengaluru-based Centre for Wildlife Studies, explored the idea of identifying patterns of leopard attack spread, just like epidemiologists identify disease spread.
“People in India share space with wildlife, even with large carnivores such as lions, tigers, and leopards. While coexisting with these carnivores, occasionally incidences of big cat attacks occur. Stories of individual problem animals persist in historical accounts of man-eater leopards and tigers, and in people’s memories,” said the Centre for Wildlife Studies.
