Why do leopards have spots

According to the story titled How the Leopard Got His Spots” by Rudyard Kipling, the rosette patterned skin of the leopards came from fingerprints of a man. Quite an entertaining story but scientific in a way specially in pointing out that spots on the skin of the leopards provide them the ideal camouflage they needed in hunting for their breakfasts, dinners, and teas” in a speckly-spickly shadows of the aboriginal Flora-forest”.

Of course the story was intended to be fictional including the part where the Ethiopian put black spotted prints on the leopard Best Beloved” by using the tips of his fingers which is amusingly funny and charming. But scientists nowadays searched for the answers that intrigued many people as to why leopards do have spots in the first place.  Surprisingly, the fictional story already had the answers and was only confirmed by the scientific studies.

According to research made by Will Allen of Bristol’s School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol, animals that reside in trees, in a dense forests, and are active in areas with low levels of light are likely to have patterns on their skin including leopards. It only goes to show that the environment and the variety of patterns on the fur of the leopards are pretty much connected.

However, it is not just the leopard’s spot that varies. The base color of the skin of the leopards also differ depending on their natural habitat that ranges from being golden-yellow in wide open grasslands, yellowish-white in dessert areas, dark gold in forests and mountainous regions, and black (or melanistic) in wet and heavily forested areas.

Having said this, environment plays an important role in allowing species to evolve into their original patterns and colored skins, and to make them perennial in a particular population.