Hey, you’re not an animal dentist by any chance are you? Oh I’m in terrible pain! There's excruciating pain in my upper left canine tooth. I hope I don’t lose that one. The canines are the most important, when it comes to delivering the killing bite! Well, all my teeth are important if you think about it… the six small incisors in front help with gripping and ripping meat off the bones, and the premolars and molars slice the delicious chunks of meat into nice bite-sized bits. What? You can see what the problem is? A bone sliver in my gums? Hang on, let me try and get it with my tongue…. grr, urr, aaaaa hawk tuah! There I got it! Oh I feel so much better!

I must have bitten down a bit too hard on that deer I was feasting on. If only my teeth were big and robust like my cousins, the lions and tigers. But then again, their teeth are like that because they are more social hunters and go after really big prey. We, Sri Lankan leopards, prefer a more personal, solitary hunting experience. You could say we don’t like to share, haha! Ah but the one I really do envy is, my close cousin, the jaguar. That side of the family evolved to have large molars, capable of cracking bones. Mainly because they go after hard shelled reptiles like turtles and such. Ah, what wouldn’t I do with teeth like those… not get bone slivers stuck in them for one! Hah!

Although it is not a common sighting, Dilum encountered this magnificent leopard during a trek at Horton Plains National Park. Guests at the Mahoora Tented Safari Camp in Wilpattu as well as in Yala have better opportunities for sightings during excursions, due to the large population of leopards in those parks.