Scientists claim to have finally confirmed what Rudyard Kipling wrote a century ago about how the leopard really got its complex spots.
A British team has proved the author’s theory in the Just So Stories for Little Children that the unusual pattern provided camouflage to leopards in an environment “full of trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows”.
The scientists have shown that animals that live in dense habitats in the trees and active at low light levels are the most likely to be patterned, especially with particularly irregular or complex shapes.
William Allen of the University of Bristol, who led the team, investigated the markings of 35 species of wild cats, London’s Daily Telegraph reported.
Said William Allen: “Rudyard Kipling was right about the reason leopards got their spots ... they provide the perfect camouflage.” —PTI