A Bornean leopard and her two cubs were captured on camera strolling through a Malaysian forest reserve two weeks ago, a rare daytime sighting of the elusive animals in the wild.
Found only on the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the big cat species is known to zoologists as Neofelis diardi, with just 700 estimated to live in a habitat shrunk by poaching and deforestation.
“Seeing it in daytime is nearly unheard of, and never with its young,” said Michael Gordon, who filmed the animals cross a road and walk into bush in Deramakot in Malaysia’s on Borneo, where camera traps first spotted the cats in 2010.
This animal feeds on monkeys, small deer, birds and lizards, and is the main predator on Borneo, an island shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.
