The spotted big cats - leopards, jaguars, and cheetahs - have spots that help them blend into their environment. Leopards have spotted coat patterns called rosettes. Rosettes are considered a flecked pattern and that the most transformation of coat patterns originate from the flecked pattern which is considered primitive for the Felidae as a whole (Werdelin, 1997). Jaguars, like leopards, have rosettes, although unlike leopards their rosettes have a spot in the middle (NG Jaguar, 2020). The cheetah's coat is covered in black solid spots.
These cats are known to be poached for their coats. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the jaguar was heavily poached for their furs (Panthera Panthera onca, 2020; WWF Jaguar The Amazing, 2020). It is believed that as many as 18,000 jaguars were poached each year through 1973 (Panthera Panthera onca, 2020). The cheetah coat is sought out and is part of the reason they are hunted (Panthera Threats Facing the Cheetah, 2020). In southern Africa 800 leopards are killed every year for their fur and there are fewer than 5,000 leopards that remain in South Africa alone (Panthera Leopard, 2020). Panthera started the #LeopardSpotted movement to encourage people to bring attention when they wear leopard print by posting it to social media to remind others that only leopards need to wear leopard fur (Panthera Leopard Spotted, 2020). They created a faux fur replacement program where they work with local communities to provide them with faux fur garments that can be used in traditional ceremonies resulting in a decline in the demand for real leopard fur (Panthera Leopard Spotted, 2020).
Literature Cited:
National Geographic. (2020). Animals: Jaguar.
Panthera. (2020). Jaguar: Panthera onca.
file:///C:/Users/reedt/Downloads/Jaguar%20Fact%20Sheet%20(4).pdf
Panthera. (2020). Leopard. https://www.panthera.org/cat/leopard
Panthera. (2020). #Leopard spotted. https://www.leopardspotted.org/
Panthera. (2020). Threats facing the cheetah. https://www.panthera.org/cat/cheetah
Werdelin, L. (1997). How the leopard got its spots: a phylogenetic view of the evolution of felid
coat patterns. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 62, 383–400.
Werner, J.C., Philibert de Lasteyrie, C. (1818). [Comparative illustration of cheetah,
leopard and jaguar] [Image]. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cheetah,_leopard_%26_jaguar_(en).jpg
World Wildlife Fund. (2020). Jaguar: The amazing Amazon big cat.
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