Animal Central: Leopards (Plus an Extra on Animation)

Today, read a book on series I liked, and got data on leopards.

Leopards
Some of it, it was the usual stuff on big cats that I'm bored of. You know... they're solitary creatures with territories. Female territories are smaller than male's, and males' territories overlap females. When cubs are three months old, they follow Mom and learn to hunt. Cubs leave Momma when they're 2 years old. They face all the same threats as other big cats: territories being destroyed, killed by humans (ranchers when they hunt livestock and/or people for food because natural prey's short), killed for their furs, and some of their body parts are part of traditional Asian medicine, so they're hunted for that too. And it's illegal to hunt them to boot. People are trying to help them too.
Some stuff, however, was new. Leopards have ringed spots called rossettes (sp?). They're small cats, but some of the strongest. Get this... they drag their prey up trees sometimes to make sure that dinner's all theirs. Talk about strong, and pretty clever! Of course, they have to deal with lions and hyenas for lunch.
Leopards live in a lot of places (grasslands, forests, deserts, and mountains), and they eat a ton of stuff, from insects to even baby giraffes! Their fur also differs on their places, though most have spots. The black leopard (also called the black panther) is the exception.
There are 3 species called leopard. Each of these is a separate species. While leopards are good with trees in general, the cloud leopard spends a lot of time there. It even hunts from trees, bouncing down from up high onto the prey it's been waiting for. It also has the biggest canine teeth of all the cats. Snow leopards, meanwhile, have paws that have extra fur and act like snowshoes (so they don't sink), extra-long tails that sometimes are used like scarves, and bigger nostrils that scientists think help the leopard get more oxygen in their higher, mountain homes.
Momma has 3 cubs. For the first three months, they hide while Momma hunts. When they're following Momma, Momma keeps her tail up so her cubs can follow the white fur at the tip of her tail (and, therefore, follow her).

Extra
Another How It's Made, another cool sight.
This time, I saw how animation was done. There was a lot more done on paper than I thought, like making the characters and backgrounds. Then a lot's done on computer, like making the characters move. They first make a skeleton figure on the computer, and then make the character around it. Of course, they have to make the characters around it. A lot of complicated computer programs go into everything. And matching mouth movements to talking can take months. And get this: it can take a whole year to make a 24 minute show! Wow! And, from one scene I saw, the voice actors can see their characters while they're doing the recording (the sound-matching thing takes special programs too). Oh, and before making the final thing, they make a rough version of the show they can play around with and make better.