I had an opportunity to witness a peculiar behaviour of a big male leopard (Panthera pardus) in the hilly tracts of Udaipur.

My father and we three brothers were sitting on a hillock and admiring four Sambars (Cervus unicolor) does and two grown up fawns grazing peacefully in a clearing on the face of a hill about 200 yards from us. Between the Sambars and us, there was a belt of scrub jungle and beyond this there was a dense forest. They were on an elevated ground above us. We were engrossed in watching when suddenly my elder brother caught sight of a leopard, in a depression between the hinds and us, stalking them. A good breeze started from our direction towards the hinds.

When the leopard was about 70 yards from them and almost the same level with us, the does became uneasy. It crouched there for about 5 minutes, occasionally raising and slightly turning its head sideways. Its whiskers taunted and relaxed alternatively, which I could see clearly with the help of binoculars. Slight whiff of the leopard was detected by the Sambars and they became alert.

The leopard realized its folly that it was stalking its prey, which had an acute sense of smelling, downwind. It stopped on the tract, detected the direction of the wind by its whiskers and retreated. The leopard thus terminated its first stalking and now it tried to stalk upwind.

It turned and retreated for about 30 yards towards our right side and disappeared, reappearing again over the bank of a dry nullah and started stalking over a comparatively barren ground. Soon it was detected by a hind. She advanced two or three steps towards the leopard followed by two other hinds, gave a loud bell and all of them dashed into the dense jungle. The leopard rose from his position, took two steps, raised its tail, gave a woogh call and went off.

From this incident I inferred that these big cats know the importance of wind and use their whiskers as a tool to detect wind direction.

The Article was first published in Journal of Bombay Natural History Society:

Tehsin, R. H. (1980) Do Leopards Use Their Whiskers As Wind Detector? J. Bom. Nat. Hist. Soc. 77(1): 128