Attack Leopard Was Amur

An Amur leopard at a zoo in Kansas mauled a 7-year-old boy who climbed through a railing into the animal’s exhibit.

An innocent zoo trip turned into a horror show Friday, May 6, 2011, when the leopard attacked the child.

The child was rushed to the hospital and is in fair condition after the four-year-old Amur leopard (pictured above) slashed the boy’s head and neck.

Witnesses say the boy scaled the 5-foot railing and approached the animal’s cage (seen above) when the beast stuck its paw through the fence and pounced.

If not for the quick thinking of two bystanders, the child may have been killed.

A man and woman nearby hopped over the railing and the man kicked the leopard’s head, ending the attack. The boy’s head was wrapped in shirts to stop the bleeding.

“He wanted to get a closer look,” Naomi Robinson, who saw the incident, told the Wichita Eagle.

The Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), also known as the Manchurian leopard and the Far Eastern leopard, is a wild feline predator native to the mountainous areas of the taiga as well as other temperate forests in Korea, Northeast China and the Russian Far East. It is one of the rarest felids in the world with an estimated 30 to 35 individuals remaining in the wild. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has deemed the Amur leopard critically endangered, meaning that it is considered to be facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.

The first-grade victim was on a class trip with his Linwood Elementary School class to the Sedgwick County Zoo when the maulting incident occurred.

According to a statement from the zoo, the leopard grabbed the boy with both paws when he entered his habitat. The leopard was responding naturally. The zoo statement said the leopard will be quarantined for at least six weeks.

(There was a new moon on May 3rd, which, along with a full moon, have been associated with animal attacks.)

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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