Both leopards and panthers can endure thirst much better than tigers, and the latter are cave-dwellers to a greater extent than any of the larger Felidæ. They only drink once in twenty-four hours, and always at night. Their retreats lie amid low, arid, rocky hills covered with underbrush, traversed by gullies whose sides have been washed out into recesses by floods, and their rocks worn away into caves by weathering or percolation. They are much more active and energetic than their striped relatives, can better endure fatigue, and are, as a rule, bolder and more enterprising.
It is very far from being a fact, however, that “the habits of leopards are invariably the same”; that is an error into which Sir Samuel Baker was betrayed by the doctrine of instinct, and which has likewise been shared by nearly every other writer upon natural history. There is a certain sameness in the behavior of such creatures, as there is in that of all classes of animals leading similar lives; but this is as much as it is possible to say. In some localities, for example, the panther is strictly nocturnal; in others it appears that he hunts during the day nearly as much as at night. In no instance is he an organic machine. Far from it; this prowling marauder is the fiercest and most adventurous of wild beasts, astute to a degree, capable of using every faculty to its fullest extent, well able to take care of itself, and fatally skilful in compassing the destruction of others; a being in every way qualified to design and execute its projects, to achieve all those ends which courage and cunning enable it to attain, and quite fit to meet the ordinary emergencies that may arise during the perpetration of its acts of rapine and bloodshed.
The panther’s cry—Gérard (“Journal des Chasseurs”) calls it a “scream”—is often heard upon Indian hillsides when darkness begins to obscure the scene. Captain Baldwin describes it as a harsh, measured coughing sound, without much timbre or resonance, rather flat, in fact, and not at all like the roar of that animal it most resembles,—the American jaguar. Like most of the Felidæ, this species commonly gives tongue upon leaving its lair, or, at least, has been frequently reported as doing so. This is not a point of much moment, but it is a matter of considerable importance to the inhabitants of any village that may lie in the neighborhood, whether that ominous voice dies away in the forest, or appears to be approaching their dwellings. When a panther takes to man-eating, Colonel Pollok (“Sport in British Burmah”) and Captain James Forsyth (“The Highlands of Central India”) assert, “he is far worse than a tiger.” Certainly, no records of such desperate ferocity exist in the case of any other creature of the cat kind; no other is reported to have taken like risks or to have succeeded in its fatal enterprises in the face of equal difficulties.
It is to be taken into consideration that a panther very rarely exceeds eight feet from tip to tip, or weighs more than a hundred and seventy pounds. Several writers have said that this animal’s powers of offence are scarcely inferior to those of the tiger; nevertheless, nothing is more certain than the fact that with all its great strength, its exceeding activity, and formidable armature, a panther cannot stand before a tiger for a moment. It cannot overwhelm a man instantly, bite him through the body, or crush his life out with a single blow; and yet, unless like the superstitious people whom this fell beast destroys, we can imagine demons becoming incarnated to scourge humanity, nothing more terrible and deadly than a man-eater of this class can be conceived of. Captain Forsyth thus sketches a famous panther of the Seoni district, which he was in charge of when those scenes alluded to occurred. “This brute killed, incredible as it may seem, nearly a hundred people before he was shot by a shikári. He never ate the bodies, but merely lapped the blood from the throat. His plan was, either to steal into a house at night and strangle some sleeper on his bed, stifling any outcry with his deadly grip, or to climb into the high platforms on which watchers guard their fields from deer, etc., and drag his victim thence. He was not to be balked of his prey, and when driven off from one side of a village, would hasten round to the opposite side, and secure another person in the confusion. A few moments accomplished his murderous work, and such was the devilish cunning he joined to his extraordinary boldness, that all attempts to find and shoot him were for many months unsuccessful. European sportsmen who went out, after hunting him in vain, would often find his tracks close to their tent doors in the morning.”
It is about time that the usual explanation given for this kind of exceptional conduct upon the part of a beast of prey by those writers who think it necessary to allude to their character, otherwise than in general terms, was banished from descriptive natural history. The course of thought upon the natural relations which subsist between men and brutes, seems to run somewhat in this wise. At sometime, somewhere, and somehow, all inferior denizens of this earth were made to appreciate and fear human superiority. That impression was transmitted as an instinct, and is in full force now. When, therefore, a predatory animal does such violence to its nature as to eat a man, the shock, which according to conventional ideas always attends great crime, unhinges its mind. A kind of madness ensues. It becomes wild, and is driven by Furies like an ancient Greek guilty of sacrilege, or early Christians who, as reported by Gregory the Great and many others, had swallowed devils. Instantaneous change of character is the consequence, and the creature henceforth thinks, feels, and conducts itself in a new and terrible manner.
That is about the sum and substance of most statements bearing upon this subject, and there is not the slightest foundation in fact for any of them. This question has been considered in the abstract; but with regard to the panther’s character the truth is that, in the way stated, no respect for mankind is discoverable in his conduct. It is indeed notoriously otherwise; and this is nowhere more clearly shown than in the records of observations made by men who were convinced that all species of wild beasts instinctively feared them. “The Old Shekarry” (Major Leveson) writes (“Hunting-Grounds of the Old World”) to this effect: “Panthers, like all forest creatures ... are afraid of man, never voluntarily intruding upon his presence, and invariably beating a retreat if they can do so unmolested.” Then this authority goes on to tell what he has learned about panthers in the course of an experience rarely equalled for extent and variety. They are “more courageous than the tiger.... The panther often attacks men without provocation.” When one “takes to cattle-lifting or man-eating he is a more terrible scourge than a tiger, insomuch as he is more daring and cunning.” He relates how this timid creature that never voluntarily obtrudes himself upon human presence, fights hunters on all occasions; how the beast broke into his own camps, carried off dogs that were tied to his tent pole, and much more to the same effect.
There is no difficulty in finding exploits of the same kind; Rice, Inglis, Forsyth, Barras, Shakespear, Pollok, Baker, Colonel Walter Campbell, who saw the man riding next him in a party of horsemen, torn out of his saddle, or Colonel Davidson moving with a column of troops around whose encampments the sentinels had to be doubled to prevent panthers from killing them, all tell the same story.
“The tiger is an abject coward,” and so is the lion. Panthers are audacious, but they run away upon instinct, like Falstaff. No qualifications, no reservations, are made, no middle ground is taken, only a series of facts is given, which prove, so far as anything in this connection can be said to be proved, the incorrectness of what was insisted upon in the first place.
The opinion that a wild beast that has tasted human blood is thereby metamorphosed morally, “undergoes a transformation of emotional psychology,” as Professor Romanes expresses it, scarcely deserves a serious refutation. There is not the slightest reason why any such change of character should take place, and of course it does not. But the fact of a wild beast’s taking to man-eating is a sufficient cause for an alteration in habit. What modifies the animal then, however, is not the fact of killing a man, but the discovery of the ease with which he can be destroyed. Under these circumstances the brute simply substitutes one kind of game for another; it becomes used to the feeble attempts at opposition met with, and goes on with its murders. Where the state of affairs is different, where people are ready to combine against such scourges, to anticipate their designs, pursue, circumvent, and slay them, these beasts of prey do not devour men; they keep as far from them as possible.
It is doubtful if it could be shown that panthers are more prone to anthropophagous habits than other brutes, but the evidence is strongly in favor of the fact that they fight human beings more readily. Their ferocity and hardihood are exceptional among the Felidæ.