persian leopard

Panthera pardus tulliana is a leopard subspecies native to the Iranian Plateau and surrounding areas encompassing Turkey, the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and possibly Pakistan. Since 2016, it has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as the wild population is estimated at less than 1,000 mature individuals. Common names used for P. p. tulliana include Anatolian leopard, Persian leopard, Caucasian leopard, Balochistan leopard and Asia Minor leopard. Taxonomy Felis tulliana was the scientific name proposed by Achille Valenciennes in 1856, who described a skin and skull from a leopard killed near Smyrna, in western Turkey. In the 19th and 20th centuries, several naturalists described leopard zoological specimens from the Middle East: Felis pardus tulliana was proposed by Richard Lydekker in 1899 after examining a leopard skin from the Caucasus. Felis ciscaucasica was proposed by Konstantin Alekseevich Satunin in 1914, based on a leopard specimen from the Kuban region in the North Caucasus. Panthera pardus saxicolor was proposed by Reginald Innes Pocock in 1927, who described leopard skins from different areas of Persia, but recognized their similarity to Caucasian leopard skins. His holotype was a skin and a skull of a male leopard from Asterabad. P. p. sindica was proposed by Pocock in 1930 for a single skin and two skulls from the Kirthar Mountains in Balochistan. He wrote that the skin closely resembled those of P. p. saxicolor, but was distinguishable from the typical Indian leopard (P. p. fusca) in colour. It was subsumed to P. p. saxicolor based on molecular genetic analysis in 1996.