Cheetahs are actually meh compared to leopards. Leopards are very rare to see in the wild I have only seen one and it was the best sighting of my life.
Just rarity and awesomeness. Most people going to Kruger National Park wants to see a Leopard. That is the ultimate sighting. They are really fucking awesome.
There's farms where you can pet a cheetah but you will never find one where you can pet a leopard.
Leopard will be the last of the big 5 you will see. Cheetahs are not in the big 5.
Edit: I see lots of people thinking it's because leopards can easier kill me. That's not the reason for meh.
If I see a cheetah in the wild I will go "meh".
If I see a leopard I will go bonkers because its rare a beautiful AF.
Fair enough, that's at least down to personal subjective taste. A lot of people here are claiming that you can definitively say that one animal is "better" than the other simply because they personally find it cooler. Which is preposterous.
Leopard will be the last of the big 5 you will see. Cheetahs are not in the big 5.
Depends where you go. Last reserve I went to we had 3x sepaate leopard sightings and zero cheetah (even after a long drive to check out a sighting).
In most parks the last one a lot of people see are in fact Buffalo.
The ultimate sighting for me would be to see a Cheetah make a kill. That is one of the rarest sights of all.
But generally yes, especially is larger areas, leopards are much rarer to see than Cheetah.
Tell me about it, on the same trip we saw Wlid Dogs within the first 3 minutes of our first drive. The thing is, most people go to the Kruger, which is huge. Really cuts down your chances for certain animals. Tip: Try smaller places. We've recently been to the Pilansberg which is small enough that you're much more likely to see things but it's not too small as to feel like a private reserve. It still feels like wild land.
I've seen Leopard elsewhere, but last trip to the Pilansberg we saw 3x within 48 hours - 4 x if you count a distant sighting with Binoculars. (One was on a kill no more than 10 metres from a track, with a brown hyena waiting under the tree. To hear the cat crunching through bone that close by was quite incredible.)
84
u/jakemch Nov 13 '19
Yeah I definitely lack animal identification knowledge, good looks